He was once a hot name to become UK basketball coach. He’ll likely be a bother for years.
It seems years ago now, but barely nine months have passed since all heck broke loose in the world of Kentucky basketball.
On April 7, word started to leak that John Calipari might be leaving the Wildcats to become the head coach at SEC rival Arkansas.
By that night, what seemed an unlikely and surreal scenario just hours earlier had transformed into a foregone conclusion. And by the next morning — before Calipari had even announced his resignation — the UK basketball landscape was filled with speculation over who might be next.
It was (correctly) presumed among Kentucky insiders that Baylor’s Scott Drew would be the first choice of UK athletics director Mitch Barnhart, but the national championship-winning head coach wasn’t atop the list of many in Big Blue Nation.
Some wanted UConn’s Dan Hurley. Others wanted to make another run at the Bulls’ Billy Donovan. The hopes of BBN ranged from pie-in-the-sky picks like Brad Stevens and Jay Wright to possibly-gettable-but-not-gonna-happen candidates like Bruce Pearl and Rick Pitino.
On the morning of April 8 — a few hours before the national championship game was set to be played — one of the hottest names in UK fan circles was Alabama’s Nate Oats.
Bama’s season had come to a close about 24 hours before Calipari’s move became inevitable — Oats leading the Crimson Tide to their first Final Four in program history, the run ending with a loss to UConn in the national semifinals — but even before the postseason success last year, Kentucky fans were enamored with Oats.
For anyone who loves watching basketball, it’s not difficult to fathom why.
Basically from the moment he arrived in the SEC, the former math teacher from Wisconsin who spent 11 years as a high school coach in Detroit before breaking into college basketball has been a curiosity to UK fans.
Even before he got the Alabama job, Oats made waves by turning Buffalo, of all programs, into one of the best and most watchable offensive teams in the country. The coach was brash enough to call out Calipari for “whining” before his team played UK in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. He took Buffalo to the round of 32 again the next year, landing the Bama gig after that.
When he got to Tuscaloosa — and was able to recruit more talented players to go along with his forward-thinking approach on the court — Oats’ national profile skyrocketed. In his second year, he led the Tide to their first SEC regular-season title in 19 years and their first league tournament title since 1991. Two seasons later, he won the SEC double again.
Along the way, Oats built some of the country’s best defenses, too, and seasoned coaches like Calipari openly bristled at his offensive approach that incorporated more 3-pointers (and easy looks near the basket) than had been the norm in college to that point.
By the time the last regular season ended, the tally of wins within the league over the previous five years — since Oats had entered it — was a tie at the top: Alabama with 62 SEC victories. Kentucky with the same number.
As Oats pointed out on the Final Four podium last April — the very same weekend that Calipari met with Arkansas officials to get his move in motion — the league had handed out nine trophies since he had arrived at Alabama. “I think we have four of ’em,” he said, correctly.
The next team he listed in that numerical rundown? “Kentucky’s got one,” Oats pointed out, matter of factly. No other team had more than two.
You’ve gotta respect the showmanship. A lot of UK fans certainly did.
So it was no wonder there was a groundswell of support around Oats as the next leader of Kentucky basketball by the time it became clear Calipari was on the way out. For those who have forgotten, that intense hope among a vocal group of Cats fans lasted less than 24 hours.
Right around the time the national title game tipped off — and a day before Calipari officially resigned as UK’s coach — Oats released a statement on social media making it clear he would remain Alabama’s head coach. Oats didn’t mention Kentucky specifically in his statement, but anyone who’d been following along that day knew it was a reference to the Wildcats.
At SEC media day before this season began, the Herald-Leader asked Oats about his statement and the decision to release it, even before the UK job was officially up for grabs.
“You know, I had signed a contract at Alabama. We were in the process of putting a roster together. There’s a lot of speculation out there. We had just made the Final Four,” Oats said. “… So I just thought it was appropriate that — instead of everybody asking us and (it affecting) recruiting — and it wasn’t even like a job offer happened. I didn’t try to act like I’d been offered. That wasn’t the case. We just wanted to get our fan base, the donors that maybe were contributing to collectives, we wanted to get the recruits — I just wanted to make sure everybody knew I was happy at Alabama.”
Oats noted again that he was in the process of putting a 2024-25 roster together — a task that included scouring the transfer portal, vetting available high school recruits and convincing current players to come back — and that, even then, he thought that next version of Bama could be “a lot better” than the one that had just advanced to the Final Four.
“Like, let’s focus in here,” he said of his thinking at the time, adding that family considerations also played a role. “I’ve got three daughters. I’m very comfortable. I love it in Tuscaloosa, and just make sure everybody that needs to know knows I’m staying here. So that’s kind of why we decided to put that statement out.”
Future of Alabama vs. Kentucky
To be clear, there’s no guarantee that Oats would have been on Barnhart’s shortlist to replace Calipari, even if he had stayed silent and kept his name in the speculation pool.
At that point, Alabama was just a year removed from a major scandal, with one of Oats’ players charged with capital murder, and the coach’s comments in the aftermath of the investigation receiving major negative backlash.
Drew was indeed pursued first, but he backed out of consideration on Thursday of that week. (Oats had released his statement Monday. And Calipari officially resigned Tuesday). Whether Barnhart would have seriously considered Oats after his first pick said no, we’ll never know for sure.
Hurley, a couple of days removed from his second straight NCAA title, quickly squashed any possibility of a Kentucky move. Donovan was never seriously pursued.
That Thursday night, BYU coach Mark Pope — who had been atop few, if any, UK fan wish lists when the week began — emerged as the frontrunner. On Friday morning, it was official.
What was apparent in the immediate aftermath of the coaching search seems just as clear now. Drew was No. 1 on Barnhart’s list. Among realistic candidates, Pope was No. 2.
“When you talk to him you get a real feel for his love for this institution,” Barnhart said of UK’s new coach that weekend. “I don’t think there’s anything more important at the time in our journey to find somebody that understands this commonwealth, this fan base and our program and what we needed. … He checked every box. He knew exactly what we needed and knew exactly the pathway to get it back.”
Pope’s hire was a shock at the time. He quickly won over the UK fan base, however, and you’d be hard-pressed to find many who’d trade him for anyone else in college basketball now. The Cats started the season at No. 23 in the AP preseason poll — a minor miracle, in itself, after Calipari left the roster completely bare — and have now spent the past nine weeks ranked in the top 10, with a 5-0 record against top-15 teams heading into Saturday’s game against Alabama.
Oats is doing just fine, too. And even though he wasn’t the one to replace Calipari, those who follow Kentucky basketball will probably be seeing plenty of him in the coming years.
Saturday’s game in Rupp Arena — between No. 4 Bama and No. 8 UK — won’t be the last time these two teams meet this season. The Cats must venture to Tuscaloosa on Feb. 22 in what will surely be one of their toughest tests all year.
The two sides could easily meet again three weeks after that in the SEC Tournament, and — looking further out — possibly even in the NCAA Tournament later in March (or April).
Oats has proven by now that he will be a force to be reckoned with for as long as he’s in the SEC. Alabama was No. 1 nationally on a lot of prominent preseason lists following another impressive offseason for the Crimson Tide, and this team is clearly one that’s capable of competing for a national title in 2025.
The offense is just as exciting, and Bama will remain an attractive landing spot for recruits and star transfers. Oats’ name will surely continue to pop up for other high-profile jobs in college basketball as they inevitably open up, but that recent contract extension he mentioned runs through 2030 and made him one of the sport’s highest-paid coaches, with a buyout of $18 million, for the time being.
Oats turned 50 years old in October. Pope, who turned 52 a month before that, isn’t going anywhere anytime soon either. As he said many times before even coaching his first game, Kentucky — where he was a captain on the 1996 national title team — is his dream job.
So, it certainly looks as if two of the best offensive minds — and brightest coaches, period — in the country will be battling it out against each other, at least once every season, for the foreseeable future.
For all who love college basketball and get to follow along, that should be fun.
This story was originally published January 17, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
