SEC Basketball: Ranking all 14 head coaches heading into 2023-24 season
By Caleb Hall
No. 4 Nate Oats, Alabama Crimson Tide
Nate Oats has been the head coach for the Alabama Crimson Tide for the last 4 seasons and has proven to be a top coach in the SEC. Oats started his career as an assistant for a couple schools until eventually landing a head coaching spot at Buffalo. At Buffalo he posted a 92-41 record, where he led them to the round of 32 in his last 2 years there and won MAC in his last 2 years there as well.
He then landed a head coaching job at Alabama for the 2019-20 season where he went 16-15 and didn’t make the tournament since it was cancelled for covid (although they would have missed anyways). However, in the next 2 seasons they made it to 2 sweet sixteens and the round of 64.
Oats seems to have his teams ready to play in the regular season, and you can tell just by their regular season records. Just last season Alabama went 31-6 and went 16-2 in conference. That is extremely impressive and Oats almost always seem to have the team ready to play in every regular season game. It almost seems like Alabama seems to be on the wrong end of string runs in the tourney. Just in their 3 tournament losses they lost to 11 seeded UCLA who went to the final four, 11 seeded Notre Dame, and 5 seeded San Diego State who went to the national championship game.
If Oats can turn around his teams play in March he can easily climb the ranks and become not only one the best teams in the conference, but one of the best head coaches in college basketball.