Nate Oats' Keys to Success in Conference Tournaments

Alabama basketball looks to defend its SEC Tournament Title in Tampa beginning Thursday led by a head coach with a proven track record in conference tournaments.

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Nate Oats is a numbers guy. 

The former high school math teacher turned SEC basketball coach in less than a decade still relies on numbers and analytics in the game of college basketball.Here's an impressive number about the coach. It's a relatively small sample size, but Oats has won 80 percent of the conference tournaments he's coached in as a collegiate head coach. 

Oats won the Mid-American Conference three out of four seasons at Buffalo (2016, 2018, 2019) and the only SEC tournament he's coached in as the Alabama head coach last year in 2021. (Oats was the Crimson Tide head man for the 2019-20 season, but that SEC tournament was cancelled because of COVID.)

George Walker IV / Tennessean.com-Imagn Content Services, LLC

So for a guy with an 80 percent success rate, what are some of the keys to success in these tournaments as his team opens play at the 2022 SEC Tournament Thursday night?

"I think the biggest thing is, can you get your guys to forget about the past, whether it was good or bad here, and just really worry about today?" Oats said. "And then pump them up with as much confidence as you can.”

And as anyone who has followed this Alabama basketball team throughout the season knows, there has been a lot of good and bad. But according to Oats, right now it's easy to build his team up with confidence when they've been practicing like they did on Monday leading up to the tournament. Jahvon Quinerly, Jaden Shackelford, Keon Ellis, Noah Gurley, Juwan Gary and James Rojas are all guys he specifically mentioned by name as having practiced really hard. 

George Walker IV / Tennessean.com-Imagn Content Services, LLC

"We’re trying to put everything that happened in the regular season past us and focus on SEC tournament, postseason play," Quinerly said. "I feel like guys who haven't been in this situation before, they don’t really know what it feels like to be in this position. So the upperclassmen have to set a good example for the younger guys and just make sure guys are prepared to go for postseason play.”

Quinerly said one of the biggest aspects of last year's championship team that they are trying to improve with this year's team is poise. Even when facing adversity, like trailing Tennessee by 15 points in the second half of the semifinals last year, that team maintained composure. Quinerly said it's important to keep guys level-headed when another team might make a run.

"It's a lot easier to be poised on offense when you can trust your defense like we were able to last year because you don't put nearly as much stress on your offense," Oats said.

This is something he has been preaching all year. If his players do the right things on defense, the offense should come more naturally. And even though Alabama has not always shot it well this season and has been turning the ball over a lot recently, they are still one of the top-rated offenses in the country.

Two of the biggest focuses for Oats heading into the tournament are defense and reducing turnovers on offense.

"I still think if we can be defensive oriented and take care of ball on offense, our offense will take care of itself," Oats said. "I know we haven’t shot it great at times during the year, but we’ve gotten enough quality shots. I think our offense is 12th in the country right now— that’s with all the turnovers we’ve had. If we take care of the ball, we’d probably be top five in the country. So defense, defense, defense, defense, take care of the ball on offense, and I think we’ll be alright.”

For sophomore forward Darius Miles, one of the biggest keys come tournament time is just to go out there and have fun.

"The game is not that difficult," Miles said. "Gotta have pride on defense. Last year I feel like even when we had a bad offensive game, our defense made up for it because we really had a lot of leaders that would push the defensive side. So I mean, just going out there playing hard, doing all the non-negotiables, getting stops really."

As the 6-seed in the SEC tournament, Alabama will open play on Thursday night at Amalie Arena in Tampa against the winner of Wednesday's 14/11 matchup between Georgia and Vanderbilt. 

In order for the Crimson Tide (19-12, 9-9 SEC) to repeat as SEC Champions, it will have to win four games in four days starting with Vanderbilt (15-15, 7-11 SEC) or Georgia (6-25, 1-17 SEC) on Thursday before taking on 3-seed Kentucky in the quarterfinals. Oats said preparation for the first game is super important because in order to win and advance, you first have to win. 

And he feels like he has a team capable of winning four in a row in Tampa. Alabama has not won four games in a row since the Nov.-Dec. stretch that opened with Drake at the ESPN Events Invitational in Orlando and ended with the win over Houston in Coleman Coliseum.

However, there is no looking in the past for Oats or this Alabama team. It's a new season, and it's all about right now beginning with the Thursday night matchup at approximately 7:30 against the Commodores or Bulldogs. 

"We’ve got a great opportunity in front of us," Oats said. "We’ve got to win four games in four days to defend our SEC tournament championship. It’s not gonna be easy. It's never easy. It's hard to win a conference tournament, but we've played well against teams we're going to have to play against. Some of them, we haven’t played well. Right now it's about who's playing the best basketball this week.”

Nate Oats in Conference Tournaments

Oats after Alabama's 2021 SEC Tournament win

George Walker IV / Tennessean.com-Imagn Content Services, LLC

Oats in his first year as the Buffalo head coach after the 2016 MAC Tournament Championship game

Joseph Maiorana-USA TODAY Sports

Oats after winning his second MAC Tournament in 2018

Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports