Nate Oats' press conference ended by fire alarm, smoke fills Mizzou Arena

Things stayed hot in Columbia last night after the top 15 conference matchup inside Mizzou Arena. Literally.

Following the 110-98 win for No. 15 Missouri over No. 4 Alabama on Wednesday, the fire alarms went off in the arena after smoke drifted in from an undetermined place. A photo of the scene was tweeted after the game.

There’s smoke in #Mizzou Arena with the fire alarms going off. Trying to figure out what’s going on, will update pic.twitter.com/c9CEluNGIQ

— Eli Hoff (@byEliHoff) February 20, 2025

That issue impacted the postgame proceedings, specifically the press conference for Nate Oats. The alarm started to go off during his presser as it cut it to just a few minutes long – but with Oats still getting in a great line about how the Tigers played against the Crimson Tide.

Fire alarm goes off for a small fire in #Mizzou Arena…Nate Oats: "Yeah, they were on fire tonight, that's for sure…We've known that for about two hours." pic.twitter.com/PTAtSIpyRk

— Nathalie Jones (@NathalieABC17) February 20, 2025

“Somebody pulled the fire alarm – is that what we got going?” Oats joked. “Yeah, they were on fire tonight. That’s for sure what was going on. We’ve known that for about two hours.”

“Do we just keep going or do we have to get out of here? What are we doing? Who’s in charge?” asked Oats. “We need to be out of here? Sorry. They were great. We weren’t very good.”

The apparent fire very well could have been from the offensive play in the game between Missouri and Alabama. Both teams were over or right at the century mark with them combining to shoot 57.1% from the field and 40.5% from three. Nine players finished in double-figures in the game led by Mark Sears (35 – 60% FG, 45.5% 3PT) for the Tide and then Mark Mitchell (31 – 73.3% FG) and Caleb Grill (25) for the Tigers.

With that, Mizzou won the high-scoring outing by a dozen with their all-time best point output in conference play as they’d never before gotten to a hundred or more in the SEC. This wasn’t the only moment from last night’s game in CoMo, specifically ones involving the coaches.

Oats earned a technical foul in the first half after punching a clipboard that broke onto the court. Dennis Gates was then later on the microphone in the arena telling fans to not storm the court after the win.

There was a lot going on in this game between two teams now within the top three, with ties, in the standings for the SEC. This smoky ending was part of it, as it made for a very short postgame for everyone still in the building afterward.