Nate Oats explains how high school basketball prepared him for his college coaching career

Nate Oats‘ road to becoming Alabama‘s head coach was far from conventional. However, he’s thankful for the journey. In an interview with Mark Gottfried, Oats revealed how his days as a high school coach prepared him for his collegiate coaching career.

“My route wasn’t very conventional, but I wouldn’t really trade it for anything,” Oats said. “We used to go to an NBA training camp, or like a college somewhere, and a lot of years we tried to do both. That was back when NBA started the last weekend in September, first weekend in October, and colleges didn’t start until October 15. We would try to hit one of each.

“One year, we went out for five days to Pepperdine in [Vance Wahlberg‘s] first year and learned his whole system. We’d been trending that way with opening the floor up and the dribble drive and but we pressed for the first 16 games that year. And, I found what worked, what didn’t work,” Oats continued.

“I have gone away from it. I haven’t really done it since. We did a little bit of it this year at Alabama. But, you’re not able to experiment with that many things in college because there’s a big spotlight on you. There’s a lot of questioning going on.”

Oats had plenty of time to experiment. After serving as an assistant coach at Maranatha Baptist and University of Wisconsin–Whitewater, Oats became the head basketball coach and a teacher at Romulus High School near Detroit.

He coached there for 11 years, amassing an astounding 222–52 overall record. In 2013, Oats led the team to a 27–1 record and a Class A state championship. During his tenure at Romulus, he was named the local coach of the year four times.

Finally, Oats received a shot to return to coaching at the collegiate level in 2013 under Bobby Hurley at Buffalo. During his two-year tenure as an assistant, Buffalo posted a 42–20 record, won its first Mid-American Conference tournament and made its first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance.

When Hurley left the program in 2015 to take over at Arizona State, Oats was promoted to head coach. After Oats found further success, Alabama hired him to be its next head coach in 2019.

Oats hasn’t looked back, guiding the Crimson Tide to two SEC Tournament titles, two SEC regular season championships and an appearance in the Final Four this past March.

While Nate Oats is now considered as one of the best coaches in college basketball, he hasn’t forgotten the importance of his roots.

“You’re able to develop a philosophy,” Oats said. “Even how we play here, we tweak it every year, but the general premise of it was really formed back at Romulus.”