Nate Oats went from selling snacks at a Michigan HS to Alabama coach
Alabama basketball coach Nate Oats started his basketball coaching career at Romulus High School, just 25 minutes from Michigan basketball's arena.
When 1-seed Michigan basketball plays 4-seed Alabama in the Sweet 16, it won't exactly be a reunion for Alabama coach Nate Oats . But it may bring up some memories. Oats, the seventh-year coach at Alabama, has brought two conference championships and a Final Four run to a Crimson Tide program that hadn't seen much tournament success since the early 2000s, and before that he turned mid-major Buffalo into a tournament darling and 6-seed in his final year there in 2019.
But before all that, he sold snacks to support the basketball program at Romulus High School, about a 25-minute drive from Crisler Center in Ann Arbor. Okay, that's not all he did at Romulus . But it does illustrate how far he has advanced in a relatively short time.
Nate Oats started basketball powerhouse at Romulus High School Oats, a Wisconsin native, coached boys basketball and taught math at Romulus from 2002-13 and turned the Eagles into a perennial contender. In Oats' final season in 2013, before joining Buffalo as an assistant, the Eagles won the Class A state title over Detroit Southeastern, marking Romulus' first state title in boys basketball since 1986. Oats revitalized the program at Romulus, going 222-52 in his 11 seasons and boasting a 100% graduation rate among his players.
He was named the Free Press Coach of the Year in 2013 as he turned the Eagles into a powerhouse. “I could stay here and be a very successful basketball coach and be happy with it,” Oats told the Free Press while coaching at Romulus. “Seems like every time you kind of get that way in life, a pretty good opportunity comes up.