SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL TIPOFF MEDIA DAYS

October 13, 2026

Nate Oats

Alabama Crimson Tide

Men's Media Day Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Known for his high-scoring offenses, fearless nonconference scheduling, and stylish sport coats, Nate Oats has taken Alabama basketball to new heights, including the program's first-ever Final Four. Nate's unconventional path to the pinnacle of college basketball serves as an inspiration to high school and small college coaches throughout the country.

He started his coaching career as a Division III assistant in his home state of Wisconsin. Then he spent 11 seasons as the head coach and a math teacher at Romulus High School outside Detroit. While at Romulus, to help fund the program, he sold Cheetos, Capri Sun juice pouches and Pop Tarts to students in between classes.

As Nate enters his 12th season as a Division I head coach, including his eighth at Alabama, his analytical approach is shaping the future of college basketball. Five of Nate's assistant coaches at Alabama have been named Division I head coaches.

Nate is the proud father of three daughters, all of whom regularly attend Alabama practices and games.

If you notice a little extra pep in Nate's step today, there's two reasons for it, actually. Number one, it's Nate's birthday. So, Nate, happy birthday. But more importantly, even more important than your birthday, and I have to say you kind of threw me off, Coach. You went with the quarter-zip today when I'm up here talking about your fancy sport coats. But the main reason that Nate has a pep in his step these days is because he got married this summer. Nate's wife, Alex, is here today.

Alex, welcome, officially to the SEC family. I have known Nate now for almost four seasons, and I got to tell you, Alex, that I think that your positive energy and your warmth and your kindness have been a wonderful addition to Nate's life.

Please welcome Nate Oats.

NATE OATS: Apparently I should have gone with the sport coat today, but it is true. Thanks for the warm introduction, Garth. It's been good. Got a birthday, got the birthday text from two of the three daughters so far. One may be still sleeping. Who knows?

Good day. Had a good practice this morning, came in. It's good to see all you guys.

It's a great time the year, right? Football is in full swing. I'll refrain from discussing the game on Saturday with the officials. No fines coming here. Big football fan. We're in the middle of the football season. Packers got a big win over the Bears. Brewers are up 2-0 on the Dodgers and basketball season is right around the corner. We're right in the middle of exhibition play, and we've got -- shoot, I just ran into Coach Beard out there. I told him he should have just stayed here because we've got Ole Miss Thursday right here in Birmingham.

It's great. I think the addition of the third exhibition game has been great for the game. We got to play the earliest scrimmage or exhibition we've ever played. We played Furman last week. You kind of get exposed on some stuff when you are playing against each other the whole summer, fall. Every day is a good day. Is it your offense that great? Is your defense that bad? Is your offensive rebounding that great? Is your defensive rebounding that bad? Until you play somebody else, it's hard to say whether every time our offensive efficiency looks great in practice, our defensive coach is upset. Every time our defensive efficiency has been great, our offensive coach is saying it's a bad day. It's great to play somebody else.

We got a good look at our young guys against Furman. We'll get a great look at our guys in a tougher game against Ole Miss. Definitely different styles. Talk to Coach Beard. He has been great. One of the best coaches in the country. This whole conference has some of the best coaches in the country and across all the programs.

Then I think it's great when we added the third exhibition. The third one we added is we get to play Auburn where, in the state of Alabama it doesn't get any better than an Alabama-Auburn game. If you haven't got your ticket to the Alabama-Auburn game a week from this Thursday, we'll be right here at Legacy Arena in Birmingham. Make sure you get it. It will be great. I think having the third exhibition game, opening that up. Huge kudos to Coach Pearl for wanting to get that game on.

I think the intensity of that game, the fact that it doesn't count, I don't think anybody in the game is going to realize the record doesn't go on your record. It's going to count in the state of Alabama.

It will be an intense game before we even start real games. I think it's good for the game. We did have the first exhibition against Furman. I don't know how many much you were able to watch it. If you look at a box score, we only played nine guys. We've had some injuries. I think there will be three guys that should be when they get healthy, heavy in the rotation, that weren't able to play. Jaxon Richardson was out. Had some minor injuries, illnesses. Hopefully he's back by the first real game, if not sooner.

Anderson Diaz had an elbow injury. He was out. Wasn't able to play. Aden Holloway is on his five-game suspension. On the Aden front, I addressed it last week, but super proud of him. He's applied himself consistently over the last few months. Did all the work required to get all the charges dropped. Back in the program I couldn't be more proud of a young man of what he's done over the summer and the fall so far. He won't be playing in the two exhibitions the first week of the season, and then after that he'll be good to go. I'm super excited about those three guys that weren't able to play the first exhibition.

The other nine guys that did play, though, we've got a lot of new guys in. The two returners, Amari and London, looked good. A lot of the young guys, we have a couple of them with us in Drew and Brandon.

I think if you go back to what happened last year starting with the Purdue loss and the Arizona loss, nonconference and you look at within the conference, Texas, Florida, Tennessee, you look at some of the losses we had, a lot of them even Ole Miss in the SEC Tournament, we just kind of got manhandled on the glass. The big point of emphasis for us in the offseason was getting significantly bigger. Not just taller. Kind of the two, three, and four, but bigger.

You saw a Fielder and Garrison both here, those guys are capable of playing the four. We got Jamarion Davis-Fleming in that's capable of playing four and five both. You know, we got definitely bigger kind of at two, three, and four spots. We had pretty good size at the five. Our backup five sometimes weren't that big.

We're bigger. Hopefully it helps fix the rebounding issues. Hopefully it helps fix some of the defensive issues we've had. Offensively we've led the country in scoring three years in a row. We've had the most efficient offense in the country. If you look at over the last three years combined, it's been us. Offensively we've been there.

Defensively we got to get back. Four years ago we had a top-3 defense in the country. Two years before that we were top 3. If we can get our defense back up to where we had it, you know, those two years, I think we got a chance to be one of the best teams in the country.

That was kind of the point of what we did recruiting-wise, roster construction. I think you are going start to see it hopefully. We get tested right out of the gate against Ole Miss, against Auburn, because they got some tough, physical front courts that we need to compete against. I think we put a roster together that can help fix some of the issues, and looking forward to playing this game Thursday, next Thursday, and then get to the regular season after that.

Appreciate all you being here. I'm open for questions.

Q. Happy birthday, Coach.

NATE OATS: Appreciate it. You get my age, they kind of just whiz by pretty quick, but we'll celebrate for a day.

Q. Celebrate them all. Coach, I always wanted to ask you this question. (Off microphone).

NATE OATS: It sounded like the mic cut off. When you get to halftime and you look at your stats, when do you want to back off shooting the three as an emphasis on offense?

Look, I think it depends on the quality of your threes. If the opponent has chosen to take it -- we take a lot of threes. If you look at our three-point rate, we kind of compare. Somebody put a graphic out. The D'Antoni team in Houston I think '10 and '11 kind of set the record, and everybody -- you know, breaking basketball. Then Boston I think two years ago at the Celtics even beat that three-point rate, and then we beat that one.

Yeah, we took a lot of threes last year, but I don't mind. We've also had a lot of games where we've scored 50-plus in the paint. So it somewhat depends on how the team chooses to guard us.

I mean, if we've got 20, 25 threes up at the half, and they were all good looks from three, keep shooting them. The problem is when you've got 20 threes up and ten of them are highly contested and you are forcing them and the lane is open, and we need to get more paint touches. That to me -- it's never about the number of threes. It's always about the quality of the threes you've taken. If we're not getting quality threes, then we got to address it at halftime.

If we're getting quality threes, just keep doing what we're doing unless the opponent makes a big halftime adjustment and then we've got to make another adjustment.

People ask me, like, what is your ideal number of threes you get up in a game? You have to tell me how they're going to guard us. If they're going to take away the three, then we might need to score 60, 70 points in the paint. If they're going to crowd the paint, make sure we don't hit the paint, that's when maybe we make our 20 threes that we've done multiple times since we've been here.

Q. You guys have a few guys who have played at other SEC schools before they joined your team. There was reportedly a vote that was tabled to implement a one-year sitting period for guys who transfer within the SEC. I was curious about your opinion on that and also, I guess, just what guys who transfer in the league kind of bring with that experience?

NATE OATS: I'm glad that they tabled that vote. I didn't think it made much sense. I think it would have hurt the SEC. We're getting the best players in the country. I mean, you look at every year that Garth has been sending out after the NBA Draft where the SEC compares to the other leagues. We've got more pros in the NBA than anybody else, any other league in the country. We're recruiting more pros as freshmen.

Then sometimes it doesn't work out, and they -- like you said, we've got Aden Holloway maybe struggled a little bit his freshman year. He played well for us. Brandon Garrison transferred in. Jamarion Davis-Fleming transferred in. We're super happy with all three of them. I think they're going to have great years for us, but we've also had guys leave us and go to other schools in the SEC. Mo Dioubate has been great for Kentucky. Now he's at LSU. Derrion Reed has been really good at Oklahoma. So sometimes it works both ways.

I think if you said you had to sit out a year, one, you lose -- I think we probably have one-third of the top-100 players in the transfer portal, I would guess. I don't have the exact numbers coming out of the SEC every year. So then all of a sudden we're going to say we don't have access to a big majority of the best players in the portal? Well, that doesn't help anybody in the league.

Then if you are going to say that, now agents, everybody, is going to have reservations on do we even go to an SEC school right out of the gate as a freshman? I think it was smart that they tabled it. Hopefully it never gets brought back up again because I just think unless everybody in the country is going to do it, it doesn't make sense to hamstring yourself as the only Power 4 conference in the country doing this.

Unless the Big Ten, the Big 12, ACC, Big East, everybody else is going to do this, it just doesn't make any sense to do it, in my opinion.

Q. Anderson Diaz is hurt right now, and we know about Holloway's suspension. How is it going to help the team grow with Amari having to do more ball handling? Qay Samuels I know did some, and you've talked about Brandon Garrison being the best big passer you've had.

NATE OATS: I think it's definitely going to help Amari kind of become that primary ball handler that we talked about him doing in the offseason, with Holloway not playing these next four games, first five games, three being exhibition, and then Diaz being out. It would have obviously helped to have Diaz do what we know what Holloway is capable of.

We like to play with multiple handlers. To have three guys capable of being a point guard and Diaz, Holloway, Amari is great. I think Qayden Samuels, you saw what he was able to do against Furman. I think he's capable of doing it. I think Cole Cloer has more of that in his game we're going to look for. And we also got plenty of other guys that can bring the ball up the floor.

I think Brandon Garrison can really pass. I think he can also grab defensive rebounds, push up the floor himself. I think maybe not having the two guys that have maybe been point guards, if you will. We don't necessarily play with a point guard the way we play. We just play with basketball players on the floor. You know, creators, if you will.

If you got two guys that have been creators their whole life kind of out, it puts a little bit more of an onus on guys like Amari, Qayden, Cole, Brandon Garrison, and different guys to -- Tarris Bouie, a little bit, just to create some offense. I think they were pretty good against, our defense has got to get better, but we did put some points up against Furman in that first game, that first exhibition.