re: BREAKING NEWS: The University of Alabama will hire Nate Oats of Buffalo as its next coach

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He's no good anyway though. Amirite?

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Are you kidding me?

Thad Matta is a hall of fame level coach.

Made the tournament 13 of 17 seasons as a head coach and has 439-154 overall record.

That is crazy good.

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I agree with Smoove. Bama needed a name. Some white dude from Wisconsin with 4 years experiance won't cut it. Should be fun.

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If the doesn't cut it, he will get canned just like Avery.

Alabama will NOT retain a high priced coach that turns in mediocre results, can't develop his players, doesn't recruit to his system, and can't adjust his scheme to fit his personnel.

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It's way to early to judge Oats, but he inherited a ton of talent from what Bobby Hurley built at Buffalo.

Hurley is doing the same thing at Arizona St. ASU won 15 games Hurley's first two years, then 20 and 23 games the next two with NCAA appearances

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Oates just beat Hurley in the tourney.

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“You’ll see Nick Saban go crazy when (Alabama is) up three touchdowns in the fourth quarter,” Oats says. “Well, that’s what’s starting to irritate me. We’re up 28, for instance, at St. Bonaventure. We’re supposed to win that game by 35 to 40. Well, we don’t. We won it by 18 because we don’t keep our foot on the gas pedal.”

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LOL - it was destiny

He needs to be on the phone with Lewis and Petty right now, looks like he LOVES to jack up a shite ton of 3's.

For those of you wanting any insight into Oates, this was exactly what we feared would happen at the end of this season. While we were hoping that his recent contract extension would buy us at least one more year, we kind of knew this was coming, as is the life of being one of the poors in Mid Major.

So it is no secret that UB kind of floundered around MAC mediocrity before Bobby Hurley arrived in Buffalo. A huge part of his success, however, was the hiring of Nate Oates from Romulus High School who directly brought in Justin Moss, Raheem Johnson, and later, Wes Clark, and indirectly, Nick Perkins. All of these players were critical to the turnaround of the program, and for those claiming they were "Bobby Hurley's players", is sort of misleading because the main reason Bobby had them in the first place was because of Nate Oates.

Schematically, assuming he does not do a complete 180, you can expect extremely tough man to man defense that thrives on pressuring the ball handlers into turnovers, and subsequently fast breaks. Offensively, they tend to spread out the court in an effort to create driving lanes and open threes. While we never had particularly good shooters, we shoot them... Alot.

Recruiting wise, while I am obviously bummed at his loss, I am really hoping UB is smart enough to retain his assistant coach Brian Hodgson, as he was instrumental in the recruiting of many of our main players on this year's team. UB really found a niche in the JUCO market, and I'll be curious to see if Oates continues that trend, or, since he is at a school with a much larger athletic budget now, does he go after the 4 year players.

All in all, I do think Oates is a heck of a coach when it comes to the xs and os, I'll just be curious to see if and how his recruiting strategy changes as he moves to a "power conference". Like I said before, although I hope it does not happen, if he brings along his assistant coach Hodgson, it will be particularly good for you guys, so it'll be interesting to see.

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Oates just beat Hurley in the tourney.

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Yes and even though it is possible Hurley did the evaluations and targeted the Sr's on this squad he never coached any of them. They aren't the 4 and 5 start can't miss type recruits. These are players that had to be and judging by the results were developed. That alone is a huge upgrade over AJ whose players seemed to actually get worse the more time they were on campus.

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It just feels better to lose a game 81-84 than 65-84

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No doubt. Watching Alabama basketball has been a chore for awhile now, and it's not just cause they lose.

I don't think some of the people on here realize that this year's team would openly admit to not trying . All Nate has to do to improve the entertainment value year 1 is get the players to try.

Tony Barbee and Anthony Grant had their mid major programs in the tourney as well. You can say this is a great hire if you want to but truly nobody will know. This guy has zero experience recruiting in the South East so I highly doubt he’ll be able to get some good players in a season or two. Then the fans will gripe in 4 years and fire him. Rinse and repeat until they get them a proven coach.

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UBBullsFan

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UB has become sort of a G5 powerhouse recently. Really good basketball team, and I think a 9 or 10 win team in football this past season with the former Wisconsin-White Water coach. They seem to really be finding good coaches off the radar.