Maybe it’s fitting that Alabama basketball stumbled a bit on its way to this year’s NCAA Tournament. The Crimson Tide has lost five of its last nine games and is coming off a blowout defeat to Florida in last weekend’s SEC Tournament.

Sound familiar? The Tide also fell to the Gators in the 2024 SEC Tournament. It suffered three losses in its final four games and tumbled to a No. 4 seed last year’s edition of the Big Dance.

The run of form that year prompted a team meeting on Selection Sunday. Coach Nate Oats buried the tape on the Florida game. Instead, he prepared a presentation for the players on different teams that finished the regular season poorly and still made a run in March Madness.

“No matter what, next play. Next possession.” Christian Pino, Alabama’s Director of Player Development recalled from the meeting. "You make a mistake, move on. Next play. You do something cool, next play. He knew that adversity was going to hit us in the tournament, and we had adversity hit us all year.”

Alabama’s next-play mentality led to its first-ever Final Four appearance. Now Oats wants to take it one step further as a No. 2 seed in this year’s tournament. He’s broken through before — even if it was on a much less grandiose scale than March Madness.

Oats made a name for himself helping Romulus High School win the Michigan Class A state title in 2013. He accomplished the feat after four unsuccessful trips to the Michigan prep hoops equivalent of the Final Four, held in the Breslin Center on Michigan State’s campus.

Nearly 20 years after Oats’ first taste of a Final Four with Romulus in March 2005, the lessons he learned on his journey to the Michigan state title haven’t been forgotten. They’ve been replicated in the years since, and are applicable more than ever for the Alabama coach who is once again trying to help his team reach the summit after taking it so close to glory just a season ago.

It was a rude awakening in the MHSAA Districts during Oats first season that helped him become a champion of high-powered efficient offense. Romulus played rival Bellville High School for the third time that postseason, finishing with just 34 points in a season-ending loss.

“So Nate was just like ‘OK, how do we get better?’” recalled former Romulus assistant Josh Baker. ‘Who do we have to study?’ We went and watched the Memphis Grizzlies and the Pistons and Michigan State and Michigan, and just tried to figure out how can we score more? How develop better players?”

Oats’ basketball globetrotting led to quick success. By 2005 Romulus was well beyond a 34-point game in districts, and headed to the state title game under the third-year coach. Oats came one point short of a remarkable rise to the very top, as Romulus suffered a 3-point loss to Holt in the 2005 Class A championship.

“Nobody takes losses harder than Nate because of the time that’s invested and put in from him and the program and the entire staff,” Baker said. “But it was always like, there’s no excuses. There’s no crying. There’s no complaining. It’s just ‘Alright, we get in the gym and we get better tomorrow,’ and I think that’s really healthy, right? All you’ve got to do is just go 1-0.”

Oats immediately turned to the business world to take the next step. He and his assistants buried their noses in Jim Collins’ 2001 book “Good to Great,” which explores how companies transition from good companies to great ones and why many fail to do so.

The Romulus staff applied the book’s principles to the hardwood. Two-a-days, including 6 a.m. workouts beginning after that 2005 season. Weight room training followed study hall after school. Then it was skill work and open gyms with college players and pros invited to participate.

Romulus also began to follow the scheduling model Oats still uses at Alabama. Just like when the Tide plays NCAA Tournament teams like Houston, North Carolina and Purdue in non-conference play, Oats had Romulus face some of the best teams it could to get a feel of how much it had to grow before the postseason.

“We started playing games back-to-back,” Stevie “Duck” Glenn, another Romulus assistant said. “Because in the tournament you will play — here in Michigan, if you win the semis, you’re gonna play the next day for the finals. So we started doing back-to-back games and we also took the kids out to different states and spent the night and just got them acclimated to going to bed, curfew and all that good stuff. All the stuff you do at the collegiate level.”

Tom Izzo became one of many coaching models for Oats. He and his assistants would go to Izzo’s house when Romulus would compete in a summer tournament at Michigan State. One of the legendary mantras of the Spartan’s coach became the DNA for Romulus’ next growth point.

The Eagles reached the state title game in 2008, losing by two points in overtime to Detroit Pershing. If Romulus wanted another crack at the Doughboys, it needed to augment talent with grit.

“We spent that offseason just hitting the weight room and trying to have a huge emphasis on toughness,” Baker said. “And Izzo would have this saying — Players play. Tough players win championships. And he had this on the back of his shirt… So we had that for that 2009 year.”

After losing two of its top players to graduation — both of whom would go on to play for Iowa State — the 2009 Romulus team featured a cast of smaller guards and a 6-foot-2 center.

Playing at the highest level in Michigan, the Eagles made it all the way back for another date with Pershing in the semifinals. They lost by one point.

“We felt like we played really well in that second one,” Baker said. “They were a really good team and we felt like we had a really good system.”

Oats didn’t relent. He continued to learn.

When Oats wanted to learn NBA actions, he visited Memphis Grizzlies practices under former coach Hubie Brown and studied then-Pepperdine coach Vance Walberg. He went to a training camp with the Chicago Bulls to watch how Scott Skiles coached defense. He once did an extensive study of Gonzaga because the Bulldogs had the highest at-rim finishing rates in college basketball at the time.

“He loves basketball," Baker said. "Not all people in the business love it, and they want to get a break. He enjoys watching the NBA. He enjoys learning new plays. He enjoys seeing new schemes. He loves watching everything he can to learn the game. He’s just a constant learner.”

Oats’ drive to constantly improve became a key factor in his early success. That drive even manifested itself outside of basketball, usually in the form of various home improvement and construction projects.

Baker lived with Oats for six months after moving from his native Connecticut to Detroit. The pair once installed hardwood floors in Oats’ living room, along with a big-screen TV bought from Walmart so they could watch games. When he was in college, Oats spent hot Wisconsin summers roofing houses. He put those skills to use in Detroit, and once worked with Glenn to fix up the roof on his mother’s home.

“He did some roofing jobs, me and him,” Glenn said “And then as you’re doing those roofing jobs, now you’re talking, but you start constantly talking about basketball.”

Oats’ ever-working basketball mind helped him create a network of coaches who have succeeded in something he’s trying to accomplish. Before the meeting ahead of the 2024 tournament, Oats reached out to former South Carolina Coach Frank Martin and former Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim for advice. Both coaches led their teams to the Final Four after early conference tournament exits.

Oats also relies heavily on his own staff for more than just construction help. The competitor in him knows getting 1% better from an assistant's suggestion can be the key to a championship.

“If you come to him with a point and you back it up with data and with actual valid points… he will take it all into consideration,” Pino said. “And that’s what makes him the best is he does a great job filtering all the different suggestions that we give him as a staff, and for some reason he always picks the best ones. Usually the worst ones he doesn’t pick and I don’t know how he’s so good at knowing right from wrong, but he wants to hear everybody.”

Oats had a good cop, bad cop routine with Glenn.

‘“Alright Duck, I’m gonna ride the shit out of such and such but I need you to come back behind me and soften the blow,’” Glenn recalled, quoting his head coach. “He was like, ‘I’m gonna throw his ass out of practice,’ and this was a setup from me and him. ‘I’m gonna throw him out of practice but I need you to go in the locker room and just bring him back out. But I just want to send a message,' and that was our game plan."

The delivery method might seem harsh, but there was a method to the message. On an Oats team, no player is above anyone or exempt from the same hard work he demands for his side to win a championship.

The work Oats put in also earned him respect. At Romulus he would make DVDs for every player to study their matchup in the next game. Player’s saw his dedication to get better on the court, as well as his relaxed side off it.

“After you get off the court, it was like, hey you’re best friends,” Glenn said. “But when it was time to hit the court... — ‘I’m not Nate your buddy, I’m Nate your coach. So this is how we’re going to do it.’ But then after, we’d go to his house and he would do outings. We would take them out to eat, just everything. We would laugh and have fun. But when it was court time, it was court time, and they understood that and that’s what I think built that relationship.”

Accountability, respect and having everyone on an equal playing field reinforces a player-led team. Oats has kept a similar system of accountability at Alabama. From his blue-collar system to players voting on MVPs of each practice. A walk-on has just as much impact as the best player on the team. If a player is doing what Oats’ culture requires, they have a voice.

“He does a good job making everybody feel a part, and he gives everybody ownership of the program,” Pino said. “And when the players are taking ownership – player-led teams are the teams that go farthest.”

Romulus had the player-led team it needed in 2013. One season prior, the Eagles finally conquered Detroit Pershing in the 2012 Class A playoffs, beating the Doughboys in the quarterfinals. They came up narrowly short of their first state title appearance since 2005, losing by a point to Rockford High School in the semifinals.

Oats and Glenn knew they wouldn't need to wait long to finally get over the hump. The 2012-13 squad proved them right. Returning players and future Division I standouts E.C. Matthews and Wes Clark held the team culture in place. Romulus went 27-1 and defeated Detroit Southeastern to win first Class A state title since 1986 when Glenn achieved the feat as a starter for the Eagles.

“If Nate or myself wasn’t sitting on that bench, they probably would have won that game anyway,” Glenn said. “Nate had installed in them so much confidence and he was able to tell them how to put in the hard work. Success is not from an accident, it’s from hard work, and they put in the time and that was the gratifying moment for him to see them win it for the amount of time that they put in.”

Oats’ dedication to his craft drew Glenn and Baker to become key parts of his 11-year journey at Romulus. It’s also what helped convince Pino, who spent one season playing for Oats at Romulus, that he was the right coach to work for when he joined the Alabama staff in 2019.

The lessons from Oats’ five trips to the Breslin Center are still resonating. They were critical in helping Alabama make its first Final Four last season and will be paramount in the Tide’s quest to take the next step this year.

“I think it’s going to be at Alabama where he does it,” Pino said. “At that time, I told my mom, ‘No coach has ever coached me the way he does and cares as much or is as dedicated or works as hard as him.’ I remember it when I told my mom. It’s honestly insane how we went from that to here.”