Final Four Bringing Nate Oats' Coaching Journey Full-Circle

Oats will face a familiar foe in his first career Final Four game, one which helped him get his break in college coaching.

PHOENIX — There's going to be a lot for Alabama head basketball coach Nate Oats to take in on Saturday night.

He's the first coach in the history of the Alabama basketball program to take a team to the Final Four. He'll be coaching in his first-ever Final Four game himself, the biggest stage the 49-year-old Wisconsin native has ever coached at.

But when Oats looks down the sideline at the opposite bench and sees UConn head coach Dan Hurley, he'll be reminded of where he came from, and how he got here.

Oats and Hurley have a long-standing relationship. Before Oats became a college coach, he was the head coach and a math teacher at Romulus High School, just outside of Detroit, Michigan. He was a winner there as well, winning state titles, only after selling snacks out of his classroom to help fundraise money for the team.

During Oats' last year at Romulus, he had a star guard by the name of E.C. Matthews. Matthews had been noticed on the recruiting trail by The University of Rhode Island.

"[Hurley] recruited my kid, E.C. Matthews," Oats said "E.C. was a really good guard, top-100 guard in the country, my last year at Romulus he was a senior."

Matthews was actually recruited by the lead recruiter on Rhode Island's staff, one Preston Murphy, who's now an assistant coach on Alabama's roster. Murphy continued to recruit Matthews after staying on the Rhode Island staff through a coaching change which resulted in Dan Hurley being the new leader of the program.

“Preston [Murphy] was the lead recruiter on E.C. at Rhode Island under the previous coach," Oats said. "Then Danny gets the job, retains Preston, Danny starts to recruit him, Bobby [Hurley] comes in on some visits. […] I got to meet Bobby through that, I got to know Danny really well through the recruitment.”

Through the recruitment of Matthews, Oats got to know both Hurley brothers, Dan and Bobby, the sons of Basketball Hall of Fame coach Bob Hurley. Eventually, Bobby gets the head coaching job at Buffalo, and brings Oats on as an assistant.

"He’d been in, saw me work as a high school coach, and they’ve got a lot of respect for high school coaches, the two of them, with their dad being a Hall of Fame coach," Oats said. "Bobby gives me a chance, and shoot, it was good for both of us. We win big, he gets the Arizona State job, and he’s still there.”

After success at Buffalo, Bobby took the head coaching job at Arizona State, while Oats was elevated to head coach at Buffalo after just two years as an assistant. Oats spent four incredibly successful years as the head coach, before Greg Byrne made the call in late March 2019 to bring Oats down to Tuscaloosa.

Now, after both coaches have had wildly successful careers since first meeting, Oats and Dan are set to face off at the Final Four in Phoenix, just a few miles down the road from where Bobby coaches his own team.

“It’s ironic, it’s in Phoenix," Oats said. "I don’t think we’ll be breaking bread Friday night with me, Bobby and Danny, but it is kind of cool that we’re playing each other in the Final Four in Bobby’s hometown, current hometown now.”

UConn has reestalbished itself as one of, if not the premiere power in college basketball under Dan Hurley, winning the national championship last season and seemingly hurdling towards another one this year with an utterly dominant run through four games of the 2024 NCAA Tournament. He's continued to be a mentor and friend to Oats throughout his successful tenure.

“Danny’s one of the guys I talk to a lot during the year," Oats said. “We’re both going to get both our teams ready to play, we’re both going to be super competitive. I’m sure he’s going to be on the refs as usual, I might be a little bit as well. We’ll both coach the game super intense and then, you know, whoever wins at the end we’ll hug it out and cheer for the other one in the final and be friends after the game."

Speaking to the media on Thursday ahead of the matchup, Hurley echoed the care the two have for each other, but jokingly made his preferred game outcome clear.

"Somebody that I really care about is going to play for a national championship, preferably me," Hurley said. "I also care about Nate, too, to a much lesser degree."

Oats hasn't quite been as successful as Dan in his limited time as a head coach, but he's stacked up an impressive resume for someone only in year nine as a Division-I head coach. Between seven total conference championships between the MAC and the SEC, three second weekend appearances and now a Final Four, there's plenty of reasons to point to Oats as one of the elite names in the sport. But even he acknowledges the importance of the role the Hurley brothers played in getting him where he is now.

“Tons of respect for those guys. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for either one of them," Oats said. "Danny brought Bobby, got him in, Bobby brought me in, he’s a mentor of mine, as is Danny. It’s super cool that I’m playing against him, I just wish his team wasn’t so good."