Alabama men’s basketball head coach Nate Oats said he apologized after pushing a Missouri player during the Crimson Tide’s 93-75 win at Coleman Coliseum on Tuesday. The incident happened in front of the Tide’s bench going into the under-8 timeout during the first half, and involved Oats putting his hand on MU’s Aidan Shaw.

Oats began his postgame press conference by speaking about the push.

“No disrespect to him or his program,” Oats said, speaking of Missouri coach Dennis Gates. “I apologized to both coach Gates and Aidan Shaw. Aidan seems like a great kid and that was an unfortunate situation, but I apologized to both of them. Wanted to address that before we got going.”

The incident did not result in a technical foul call on Oats. The play before resulted in a personal foul on Alabama’s Aaron Estrada, which led to a minor brouhaha between Estrada and MU’s Anthony Robinson.

Oats pushed Shaw away from the Alabama bench. After the incident, UA’s new football coach Kalen DeBoer came onto the court to address the crowd.

After the game, Gates questioned why nothing was called on Alabama’s coach. He praised Shaw for showing restraint after the incident.

“Nate apologized after the game,” Gates said. “I’ve known Nate since he was a high school coach in Detroit, but I just posed the question: if that was players in a huddle with a hand on an opponent, what would take place? It would be an automatic technical foul, right? I thought I saw two referees in the huddle, it wasn’t a technical foul. But that’s the question I would pose. If it was players making hand contact, what would take place?”

The game was chippy throughout. Alabama ended up with two technical fouls, while the Tigers were called for one.

Both coaches chalked it up to two teams playing hard.

“A combination of us understanding we gotta protect our home court, it’s a must-win game for us if we’re gonna try to win this league, and they have a lot of pride over there and they weren’t trying to start 0-4,” Oats said. “Other than that there’s nothing between the programs. I actually really respect Dennis and think he does a great job. I don’t think our players had any past history with any of their guys, I just think it’s two teams playing hard, understanding it’s a big win either way.”

Alabama moved to 4-0 in SEC play with the win, 12-5 overall. The Tide will be back in action Saturday at Tennessee.