Alabama basketball reached its week off after beating Georgia Saturday, and won’t play again until it faces Arkansas this coming Saturday. As the Crimson Tide sits at No. 3 in the nation, head coach Nate Oats said he is taking a little bit easy on his team.

“It’s huge for a physical reset,” Oats told reporters Monday in Birmingham, following a speech to the Birmingham Tip Off Club. “We’ve got a lot of guys banged up, so we’ve adjusted our original plan. Our original plan was kind of, go hard twice this week to stay really on top. We’re only gonna go hard once in practice and make sure that it’s a lot more controlled than maybe what a game would be.”

On Monday, Oats made the Crimson Tide think it was in for a long day. He then cut practice short after an hour, and took the group on a field trip.

Instead of a difficult practice, Alabama players went mini-golfing. Oats was later asked which member of the team performed best on the greens.

“I didn’t get the final tally,” Oats, who had to rush off to Birmingham, said. “Grant (Nelson) beat me by one, so Grant must have won. I don’t think anybody else on that team would have beat me. So I guess Grant, which makes sense, he likes to actually golf.”

After Alabama comes out of the bye week, it faces Arkansas Saturday, before a midweek matchup with Texas. After that, it’s seven consecutive games against ranked teams to finish out the regular season, including two matchups with No. 1 Auburn.

As his team prepares to face the brutal schedule, Oats said he hoped Arkansas’ Saturday road win over Kentucky would help the Tide not overlook the Razorbacks.

“I think this league helps us not overlook teams,” Oats said. “I don’t know if we overlooked Ole Miss or what, but they were 3-0 and somehow we looked like we didn’t respect them with the way we played. I hope we don’t ever do that again.”

Alabama and Arkansas are scheduled to tip off at 7 p.m. CT Saturday in Fayetteville. The game will be aired on ESPN.