Connections are renewed at the Final Four every year.
Coaches who played or coached at one of the other schools on opposite sidelines. Players facing a former team or coach. Assistant coaches who were on previous staffs together at the same site.
The ties between Alabama coach Nate Oats, UConn coach Dan Hurley and his brother Bobby run deeper than most.
“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for either one of them,” said Oats, whose Alabama team faces UConn in the national semifinals Saturday night.
Their relationship goes back to Detroit more than a decade ago.
Bobby, a two-time national champion as a player at Duke, was early in his coaching career, serving as an assistant on Dan’s staff at Rhode Island. He went on a recruiting trip to Detroit’s Romulus High School to watch guard E.C. Matthews and the coach there caught his eye.
Bobby was named Buffalo‘s head coach not long after that and hired Oats to serve on his staff.
“Instantly, you could see his passion for the game and knowledge of the game, how much he loved talking about basketball,” Bobby Hurley said. “Just watching how he conducted practices, it was high-level stuff. He really had a lot of intensity. The practice had great structure, and you could just tell he was a gifted coach.’
Bobby Hurley had a brief-yet-successful run at Buffalo with Oats at his side, leading the Bulls to their first NCAA Tournament in 2014-15, his second season.
Hurley parlayed his success at Buffalo into the head job at Arizona State, where he’s been since 2015. Oats was named interim coach and, while then-Buffalo athletic director Danny White was deciding what to do, Hurley said he would hire Oats as an assistant at ASU if he wasn’t given the permanent position.
Oats got the job and built on Hurley’s initial success, leading the Bulls to the NCAA Tournament in his first season and three times in four years. Another Buffalo success story led to another opportunity, this one at Alabama for Oats.
The Crimson Tide missed the NCAA Tournament in Oats’ first season, but has played in March Madness each of the past four years, including three trips to at least the Sweet 16.
Oats led Alabama to the Final Four for the first time in school history this season with an overhauled roster and three new assistant coaches, earning a chance to play Dan Hurley and the Huskies with a spot in the national title game on the line.
“It’s ironic I get to coach against Danny,” Oats said. “I don’t know if ‘get’ is the correct word because they’ve got a…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at FOX Sports Digital…