Nate Oats Believes Rick Pitino is 'One of the Best Coaches to Ever Coach'

The Crimson Tide head coach spoke Friday about his respect for Red Storm coach Rick Pitino.

Mar 20, 2021; Indianapolis, Indiana, USA; Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nate Oats (left) greets Iona Gaels head coach Rick Pitino after their game during the first round of the 2021 NCAA Tournament at Hinkle Fieldhouse. Mandatory Credit: Marc Lebryk-Imagn Images | Marc Lebryk-Imagn Images

TUSCALOOSA, Ala.— The No. 15 Alabama men's basketball team won its season opener against North Dakota on Monday night, but the road immediately ahead is much tougher. The next stop on that road is a matchup against one of the better coaches in men's college basketball history.

Rick Pitino, the 73-year-old head coach of the No. 5 St. John's Red Storm, has amassed 886 on-court wins across a coaching career that spans more than five decades. The Crimson Tide takes on St. John's inside the world-renowned Madison Square Garden arena on Saturday (11 a.m. CT, FS1).

"Coach Pitino's got St. John's as good as they've ever been right now," Alabama head coach Nate Oats said on Friday. "One of the best coaches to ever coach in basketball. So, to play against him, at the Garden against St. John's, is pretty special."

The Red Storm, which defeated Quinnipiac 108-74 in its opener, won 31 games last season in Pitino's second campaign at the helm. The team will face Iona, Pitino's previous stop, at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 13.

Pitino has shown up in Oats' bracket twice before since the latter has been at Alabama, once literally, when the Crimson Tide defeated Iona in the 2021 NCAA Tournament. The Gaels then upset Oats' 2021-22 squad 72-68 at the ESPN Events Invitational in Orlando on Nov. 25, 2021.

"When we were in a bubble in the NCAA Tournament up in [Indianapolis], everything was kind of, pretty close-knit... We're warming up, and we ended up being [in] the same gym, opposite side of the curtains. I went over and introduced myself," Oats said. "I've gotten to know him fairly well the last five years or so."

Oats recalled his younger self realizing he wouldn't be able to play basketball for a living around the time he was a freshman in high school. Once he decided to get into coaching, the first instructional tape he ever bought was one that featured Pitino when he was the coach at Providence. Oats still has the tapes, but not a VHS player.

"I [have] a ton of respect for him, what he's done throughout his career," Oats said. "I've gotten to know him a lot better over the last few years here." The Crimson Tide coach compared playing St. John's to football, wrestling and mixed martial arts, saying every foul isn't going to get whistled and that Alabama needs to match the Red Storm's physicality.

Pitino has won two national championships and made seven Final Fours as a head coach. His Kentucky teams, with which Oats said, "he wasn't trying to slow it [tempo] down, that's for sure," won the SEC Tournament five times. Even so, Oats and his team aren't heading to New York City simply for a dose of shock and awe.

"We don't schedule these games to have great experiences. We schedule them to get quality wins," Oats said. "They're trying to play against good competition; they know we're traditionally pretty good. We'll go in as the underdog, which is fine. We've been the underdog plenty with the scheduling we've had around here."