Nate Oats relationship with Dan, Bobby Hurley: How family helped Alabama basketball coach to Final Four

Nate Oats has led Alabama men's basketball to its first-ever Final Four in just five seasons —a feat that's a storyline in itself leading into Saturday's showdown against top-seeded UConn in Glendale, Arizona.

But it isn’t the only interesting storyline surrounding this game. Oats and UConn coach Dan Hurley have an interesting connection: Dan's older brother, Bobby Hurley.

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"Very fortunate that I'm able to coach at a place like Romulus (High School) that gives us the resources to be able to make a run like this," Oats said Thursday during a news conference at the Final Four. "It's ironic that my first Final Four that I make, the first one Alabama makes, coaching against Danny Hurley, brother Bobby is the one that got me in this business.

"If it wasn't for Danny and Bobby, I wouldn't be here. ... Kind of funny how it comes full circle."

Full circle it is. Here's what you need to know about Nate Oat's relationship with the Hurley family ahead of Saturday's Final Four matchup:

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Nate Oats relationship with Bobby Hurley, Dan Hurley

Oats has gone from high school math teacher and basketball coach at Romulus High School in Michigan — one who would sell concessions out of his office as a fundraising tactic — to now coaching in the Final Four in a 12-year span.

The blueprints of that trajectory have Bobby Hurley's fingerprints all over it: He was the one who brought Oats to the University of Buffalo in 2013 as an assistant, a move that began in the early 2010s on the recruiting trail.

Before Dan Hurley was the coach at the University of Rhode Island, he was the coach at Wagner University Bobby Hurley was one of his assistants. One day while sitting in the Seahawks' basketball office, Bobby picked up the phone and answered a call from Oats, who was looking to build his network of college coaches.

Fast forward to 2012, when the Hurleys went to Rhode Island — where Dan was in his first season as head coach and brother Bobby was his associate head coach — and on the recruiting trail. One of the players they were considering was one of Oats' players at Romulus High School, E.C. Matthews. Through his recruiting, Oats and the Hurleys began to further their relationship.

In 2013 — after Bobby Hurley got the head coaching job at Buffalo — he hired Oats as one of his assistant coaches, having been impressed with the way he ran his program at Romulus. Oats spent two seasons as Bobby's assistant before becoming the Bulls' head coach in 2015 when Bobby Hurley left for Arizona State.

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"After hours of conversations with Nate, it became very clear to me that the best candidate to lead our men's basketball team was already on campus," former athletic director Danny White said in a statement at the time. "Nate has tremendous experience as one of the finest coaches in America at both the collegiate and high school levels, and played an absolutely critical role in elevating our program."

Oats built up the Bulls to be one of the country's top mid-major programs during his time in upstate New York, leading the program to a first-round upset over 4 seed Arizona in the 2018 NCAA Tournament. The following season, he coached against Bobby Hurley's Arizona State team and beat his mentor and former boss 91-74, again in the first round.

Following his four seasons at Buffalo, Alabama hired Oats ahead of the 2019-20 season. In five seasons, he has led Alabama to four NCAA Tournament berths, including three Sweet 16 berths, the No. 1 overall seed in the 2023 NCAA Tournament, the program's second-ever Elite Eight berth and, now, its first Final Four.

"It’s crazy how things come full circle in life sometimes,” Bobby told CBS Sports this week. “As Dan was building Rhode Island’s program, Nate was a very successful high school coach in Detroit and somehow all our lives came together in that moment. You fast forward it now a bunch of years and now here they are, going head to head in the Final Four.”

Said Oats of his journey from Romulus to Buffalo to Alabama:

"It's a similar situation to my last year at Buffalo when I played Bobby in the tournament. Which, to go against my boss, that was a little different," Oats said on Tuesday prior to Alabama's departure for the Final Four. “But this is the second time I've played one of the Hurley brothers in the NCAA Tournament. This one's just on a little bit bigger stage."

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Nate Oats, Dan Hurley, both coached high school basketball

Oats isn't the only one who coached high school basketball before becoming one of the top college basketball coaches in the country.

After graduating from Seton Hall in 1996, Dan Hurley spent a season as an assistant coach for his dad, Bob Hurley Sr., at St. Anthony's in Jersey City, New Jersey. Then after four years as an assistant at Rutgers, Dan returned to the high school level to coach St. Benedict's Prep in Newark, a position he held for nine seasons. St. Benedict's became a national powerhouse at the prep level under Hurley, as it went 223-21 overall and finished in the top five in national rankings four times.

“It’s two high school coaches that began their career in that way, and just really learned the game and became great coaches,” Bobby Hurley told CBS42 in Birmingham this week. “That storyline is very impressive, it should give inspiration to a lot of people, a lot of young coaches out there that are trying to grow, develop and dream about one day having the opportunity to do something special like my brother and Nate Oats will do this weekend.”