Omoruyi’s improved Alabama’s interior defense a bit this season, as he was recently named one of 15 players on the Naismith Men’s Defensive Player of the Year watch list. However, he, along with the rest of the Crimson Tide, has struggled against some opposing forwards and bigs this season, including Purdue’s Trey Kaufman-Renn gave the Tide a season-high 26 points.

Alabama head coach Nate Oats has mentioned in the past that Omoruyi doesn’t practice too much in the post due to the Tide’s fast-paced three-point shooting offense, but now it’s being heavily stressed. This is because No. 2 Alabama’s next opponent is at home against No. 1 Auburn, as the Tigers have forward Johni Broome, who is a front-runner for the National Player of the Year award.

“We’d like to be able to guard the post 1-on-1,” Oats said during his Friday press conference. “We’ve got a guy (Omoruyi) that we brought in thinking he could. We struggled a little bit earlier in the year with some of it and we’ve hopefully done a better job teaching him some of that. Broome is a National Player of the Year candidate, one of the best bigs in college basketball for the last few years running. He’s a load.”

“If we have to double him, he can pass well and they have shooting all over the floor,” Oats said. “They’ve got four guys that are basically 40 percent or above, which is ridiculous in college. And it’s not like they’re just catch-and-shoot guys, like these guys can make shots off the dribble.”

Those Auburn players Oats is referring to are Tahaad Pettiford, Miles Kelly and Denver Jones, who are all shooting over 40 percent from downtown and averaging roughly 11 points apiece. Guards Chaney Johnson and Chad Baker-Mazara are scoring 10-plus points on the average evening as well and are other threats that Broome, who leads the Tigers in assists per game (3.3), can pass out to.

“Ideally you don’t have to do a lot of doubling,” Oats said. “Ideally Cliff was brought in to enable us to not have to double often. But we’ve got options B, C, D in the back pocket if we need to go to it.”

An argument could be very easily made that Broome, who is second in the conference in points per game (18.1), is just as good an offensive player as a lockdown defender. Broome leads the SEC in both rebounds (10.7) and blocks (2.7) per game.

Omoruyi, along with forwards Grant Nelson, Jarin Stevenson, Mouhamed Dioubate and Aiden Sherrell will have to impose their will early on both ends of the floor in order to come close to achieving the practically impossible task of lowering Broome’s confidence.

But Omoruyi, the starting center whose primary reason for being brought to Alabama was to be a force in the paint, will likely have to lead the way for the Crimson Tide to succeed.

Oats is yet to say something along the lines of “Omoruyi is starting to reach his full potential” this season, but keeping a player like Broome in check to help Alabama get the win should change that narrative probably by the time Oats arrives to the postgame press conference.