Nate Oats opens up on how he learned, grew through help from Nick Saban
The Alabama Crimson Tide basketball program made history under Nate Oats by making its first-ever Final Four. Now, Oats would like to keep things going and win a national championship.
As a school, Alabama is known for its championship pedigree, especially within the football program. During recent seasons, that’s a program that’s been led by Nick Saban, who has helped Nate Oats grow as a coach.
“When I came to Alabama, I knew it was a football school,” Nate Oats said. “There’s no denying it. But somebody asked me that a couple of years ago. I think it’s a championship school. The whole mudita thing, I’m going to pick the brain of all the ultra-successful coaches throughout the department.”
“We’ve got multiple coaches, current coaches, that have won national championships, whether it’s men’s golf, women’s golf, softball. We’ve got Sarah Patterson retired from gymnastics, she’s huge basketball fan, her own season tickets, won multiple championships in gymnastics,” Oats said.
“But Coach Saban — I’m a big football fan. I came to Alabama loving the fact that I was going to be able to work in the same athletic department as arguably the best — maybe not even the best football coach — the best coach of any team sports in modern history, or college sports, anything, and I didn’t want to bother him. But I certainly picked his brain when it was appropriate.”
Nate Oats got to Alabama in 2019 and when he did so, he took advantage of the opportunity to work alongside Nick Saban and to shadow him to see how he did things. He then tried to take what he learned to find success in basketball, going to the Sweet 16 twice and now to the Final Four.
“I went and watched practices. I sat in on staff meetings. I shadowed him for a day. I went on road trips with him to see how they operated. I tried to learn as much as I could. It never nagged me or bothered me that football was huge at Alabama. I loved it. It’s better for recruiting. It’s better for everything for us,” Oats said.
“I tried to learn from it. And different people would make comments. Football, football. But only 18 national championships behind them. We have a few to catch up. Let’s just keep grinding. Let’s get to a Final Four first, and let’s put ourselves on a big stage.”
Even in retirement, Nick Saban is remaining close to Alabama and Nate Oats. That’s something that’s important to Oats and his relationship with the legendary coach is continuing forward.
“I love the fact that he’s still got an office at Bryant-Denny. I love the fact he’s willing to talk to me. He talked to me before this run, texted me during the run. Before I got the job at Alabama, I’ve got, like, a practice schedule. I had it in school, style sheet and different tabs, and quotes is one of the tabs. You pull quotes up for the day. I had regular quotes and I had a Saban quote. And every Saban quote, it was lined with them,” Oats said.
“Then I got here, should I use them as much as I used to use them because he’s actually coaching next door, is that going to bother our basketball players that I keep using the football coach’s quotes? I still use them. They’re pretty good. I still get more and add them to the list. It never bothered me. I love the fact that we’re a football school and we’re going to try to add another sport to the championship school level because I think we’re knocking on the door there.”
For now, Nate Oats is going to focus on the Final Four and UConn, which presents a tough matchup before a potential appearance in the national championship game.