Nate Oats fires back at Coach K's call to pause college basketball

Alabama basketball coach Nate Oats is not on the same page as Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, and he isn’t afraid to speak his mind about it.

Tuesday, Krzyzewski voiced his opinion that college basketball be put on pause due to rising COVID-19 concerns. When asked Wednesday for his opinion on the matter, Oats fired back with a question of his own.

“Can I ask you something?” Oats replied over a Zoom call with reporters. “Do you think if Coach K hadn’t lost the two non-conference games at home that he’d still be saying that?”

The reporter responded, “probably not,” to which Oats replied, “OK, I just wanted you to say it, not me.”

As Oats pointed out, No. 10 Duke (2-2) has already lost two games this season. Krzyzewski’s suggestion that the sport takes a pause came following an 83-68 defeat to No. 6 Illinois. However, the Duke coach has also seen two of his in-conference opponents — Virginia and North Carolina State — pause activities due to the virus this week.

“You have people saying that the next six weeks are going to be the worst — and it’s already pretty bad,” Krzyzewski told reporters as quoted by Forbes. “Well, should we not reassess that and just see what would be best?”

Oats sees things differently, stating that not playing would do more harm to his players from a mental-health standpoint. The former Detroit-area high school head coach said he recently spoke to a relative of one of his former players who suffered a mental health issue after being quarantined for “weeks on end” at his college program.

“Humans aren’t made to sit alone in isolation for weeks and weeks on end,” Oats said. “We’ve got to be careful with how we do life, but you still got to do life. A huge part of life for all these guys I’m coaching is being in the gym playing basketball. So I think their mental health is in a much better spot playing basketball. I think the school, the SEC, the NCAA’s done a really good job of making sure that we’re not putting any of them in danger.”

Oats, who contracted COVID-19 over the summer, also questioned the intentions of some of the coaches calling for a pause, stating if they were actually concerned about the virus, they would do a better job of wearing masks during games.

“I see all these other guys who haven’t had it, their mask is down the whole game,” he said. “It’s like they have a chinstrap on. So if they’re really worried about COVID, you’d think their mask would be up the whole game. I think some of them are using… No, we should be playing in my opinion. We 100 percent should be playing basketball.’”

Alabama (3-1) is scheduled to play Clemson (4-0) at 6:30 p.m. CT on Saturday in Atlanta as part of Holiday Hoopsgiving.