Nate Oats reveals message, mental approach entering final week of regular season

This season has been a massive success on the court for Alabama coach Nate Oats, but he knows it will ultimately be defined by what happens in March. It’s a month where anything can happen, with Cinderella teams shocking the country and championship favorites seeing their season end in heartbreaking fashion.

Alabama (25-4, 15-1 SEC) will certainly enter the tournament with a target on its back as a projected No. 1 seed. As the Crimson Tide prepare for the final week of the regular season, Oats is working to make sure his team is in the right mindset.

“College basketball gets to be a long season, especially now,” he said. “You can start with we had our guys on campus the last week of May. Summer school starts (and) we had a summer tour. So I think there’s an art to making sure they’re peaking in March. It’s definitely not a science, because I try to get them to peak in March every year and it doesn’t happen that way all the time. I think it’s one of those where we want to be really focused in, but we’ve got to be smart with how much time we spend on the floor. How much their bodies are. The whole mindset is, ‘we’ve got to push to the finish.'”

Oats has seen both deep runs and early exits in his NCAA Tournament experience. He coached 13th-seeded Buffalo to a first-round upset of Arizona in 2018 and led Alabama to the Elite Eight in 2021. However, last season the Crimson Tide suffered a first round loss to 11th-seeded Notre Dame.

This year’s Alabama team features three freshmen in the starting lineup, so Nate Oats is sending a message as they prepare for their first March Madness experience. He has tried to remind them of the work they’ve put in dating back to even before college, employing a sports psychologist to get his point across.

“A lot of these guys have been playing basketball for 10, 12, 15 years,” he said. “This is what they work for. Let’s not waste all the time we’ve put into the gym for the last however many years. Even since we got together the last week of May.

“We can’t waste all these hours we put in by not being prepared to play now. We’re in March. We want to peak in March. Tomorrow’s game’s gonna be played, the first game in the month of March. So just a ‘pushing through to the finish’ mindset. We’ve got sports psychologists that our guys meet with and he’s been talking about that. The mental part of it in March is as big as anything.”

Alabama is coming off an 86-83 victory against Arkansas that required some fight near the end to win. Games like that provide valuable lessons about what it takes to win in March, and Oats is hopeful the final two regular season contests can help prepare the Crimson Tide as well.

Alabama is next set to face rival Auburn at 7 p.m. ET on Wednesday.