Nate Oats | Alabama Head Coach

Alrighty, welcome back inside the Convention Center in San Antonio for the Final Four.

This is what's the one's coverage of the Final Four. Zach Elp here with you on the Infinity Sports Network and what a treat this is. Now joining us, he is the basketball coach at Alabama.

He's going to be entering already his seventh season with the Crimson Tide and that is NATO. It's kind enough to join us right now. Coach, appreciate the time. How you been? I've been great. I'd be a lot better if I wasn't on this show and I was coaching this week, like last year, but you know, we had a good year. A great year compared to what, you know, when I took over the program, but where we've gotten it to now, a little disappointed. We're still not playing. That was the plan, but in a one game elimination tournament, it doesn't always work like that. And we ran into a pretty good team at Duke.

They're, they're, they're very good. Well, you ripped off the bandaid. I was going to start you off with the softball, be like ranch or blue cheese. Cause I know you're in Buffalo for all those parents. Talk about that too. If you'd like, you can't be in Buffalo and ask for ranch. Thank you. No, it's, it's blue cheese.

There's not even an option, but it's a character flaw for me. I have three daughters. They all ask for ranch. I don't claim it. I'm like, what? But no, you're good. Not the real question.

Cause that's not even a question. If you've ever lived in Buffalo, it's it's they don't even offer ranch up there. The real question is whether you're going to like, where do you get your wings? Bar bill? Where do you go?

Bar bill is my favorite. It's a newer spot. It's about 20 minutes from, from the football stadium. Um, you know, for the bridge, anchor bar and duffs was the big debate.

So there's another one now. I don't, I don't, was that place even in existence when I was in Buffalo? I don't know, but I was always anchor bar duffs. Cause my sister and my cousin both went to SUNY Buffalo and we always went to dust. I thought anchor bro was a little bit overrated and I was right there next to campus. We took our recruits to dust and then bar bill came on the scene and I've never looked back. Barbell.

I think it's East Aurora. Okay. Yeah. I don't know.

That's what I'm saying. The debate up there is not ranch or blue cheese. It's just blue cheese. Don't even ask. It's more like where do you get your wings from?

I will send you a photo after this of the wings from bar bill. And I think you'll never go back to the duffs or anchor bar. There's no, there's a Santora's.

If you had the other, that's right next to campus. They're pretty good too. But yeah. So when you go back to Saturday, since we ripped off the bandaid a little bit, just how do you look back at what happened up against the juggernaut that is Duke? I mean, listen, so first off, I would have loved to save a few of those threes from the BYU game, just if we could, you know, like bank them in the bank and use them two days later. So I do think after hitting 25 threes against BYU, Duke adjusted to pick and roll coverage, you know, they built out and they've got great size. I mean, they start six, six across the board, one, two, three, six, nine point guard at the power forward spot. That's going to be in the NBA for a very long time. And then a seven, two center with a nine, eight standing reach. So it makes it hard to score at the rim their size.

They did a great job building out on the three. We didn't shoot it as well as we, you know, we had the first unanimous first team, all American in school history and Mark Sears, you know, I thought their size bothered him a little bit. He didn't shoot it nearly. I mean, shooting at 10 threes a game before.

And then, you know, he didn't have his best shooting night against Duke, but I thought their size bothered it in hindsight. You know, maybe we could have done a few things a little different to help try to get them freed up with it, but they switched everything. So when you've got a switchable lineup and you switch and we didn't do a great job with our switch attack. And again, like when you're playing these tournaments and you don't have much practice time going in, you got to kind of revert back to your, some of your habits you've built before. And as you get to the end of the year, you're not practicing much because you're trying to save the guy's legs. So we, we had, you know, a lot, a lot, a lot of reasons we didn't play particularly well against Duke.

Biggest reason they're extremely good, very well coached and they played great. And we just didn't get it done. And you're in a one game elimination term and that's it. So, you know, I haven't even watched the whole thing yet.

I started to watch them to play back and I put it away this for another day. We'll get to, we'll get to it in a few weeks, maybe. Nate Oates here with us from Alabama. You have had sustained success at Alabama. You have proven that Alabama could be more than just a football school. And I absolutely love Alabama football to be clear. But now the question becomes, is this program ready to go win a national championship? How close do you think you guys are?

Right there. I mean, you look, Houston's the only program that's made worse, more sweet 16s since I've, since I've gotten Alabama back to back elite eights. You know, you look at the teams that were in the final four last year out of the four that were in there. We, we went the longest this year. We were the last one standing this year. So like we've got the number one strength to schedule in the country last two years.

And we're, we're right there. If not number one, we're top five every year and we've got, we're in the top five and power for conference wins the last five years. So what we're, we're knocking on the door, you know, do we get the elite talent that Duke gets? Not as much every year, you know, but we're right there.

We had Brandon Miller who's second pick in a draft. You know, we've been able to get our playing style recruits want to come. We've proved you can win playing this style. We proved you can get to a final four. We just got to keep knocking on the door.

And these one game elimination tournaments, like the NCAA tournament, there's a little bit of luck involved, but there's also, if you get good enough, you can like Danny early last year, kept saying they were indestructible and bulletproof. And we were not quite there yet. Your journey is incredible. Uh, 2013. You're right. You were just wrapping up at high school. We know what you did at Buffalo as an assistant, but you've done a Buffalo as a head coach. And now what you've done in Alabama, why is what you do just able to work in the college game? Well, it's analytically based. I think there's a method behind it. We've been able to get really good players to come and we play a style that we talk about efficient. I'm a former math teacher, so we, we try to be efficient. I think it's the way the, I mean, we, we study the NBA, the NBA just does basketball.

We have to do a lot of other stuff. So we, we try to steal a lot of the NBA. We put an NBA system in that's analytically based.

It's efficient on both sides of the ball. When, you know, our defense was top 30 this year, we've had a top three defense in the country, two of our years out at Alabama. And then we get players that want to make it to the NBA. We develop them.

They've got to, I think, I think the whole thing works well. We've been able to turn a football school into a much more of a well-rounded athletic department. And when it goes talking about men's basketball and football or women's basketball teams, been good to a lot, a lot of the athletic teams at Alabama have done one. Well, there's six national championships, six sports that have won national championship, shoot football's one 18. So I think we're at a really good athletic department and players style that players want to come to. And we've been able to win a lot of games. The last thing I asked you, cause I know you got to run NATO it's from Alabama. You've gone up against all four teams here in the final four.

Just what's your breakdown from? I mean, listen, Auburn and Florida, both are super well balanced, really well coached. It's going to be a great game that it's going to come down to, you know, who can make shots. And then the other side, it's a little bit more Duke's young, but those guys don't play like freshmen. They're super talented.

They got great size everywhere. Houston plays extremely hard and makes life really difficult with their defense. It's going to be interesting to know, you know, will how aggressive physical they are on defense effect. Some of the freshmen that do Cooper flag, like the way I don't know, like those guys have proven to be pretty good. I thought they were great when we played them.

That to me is going to be very, very interesting to watch that game right there. Last thing, if you ever win a championship at Alabama, does Rico Bosco, does he get a break? Rico's my guy.

Yeah. We should definitely give him a ring. He's, he's got my back out there in the media with you guys all the time. You got to get back to the final four and win a championship for him. I know, man. He's a, we got, we got to get there for him.

Rico's our guy coach. Great to reconnect with you. Thanks. Appreciate it. Roll tide.