Oats, Sears Leaning on Previous Success in Tournament

Cleveland, Ohio. - The state of Ohio has been generous to the Crimson Tide's leaders. During his time at Buffalo, Nate Oats won four conference tournaments in Rocket Arena, the same Arena where Alabama will play its first NCAA Tournament game of 2025. Mark Sears, as a member of the Ohio Bobcats, only lost one game in Rocket Arena as a starter for the Ohio Bobcats.

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In his lone season as a starter for Ohio, Sears scored 19.6 points per game on 44.4 percent shooting from the field and 40.8 percent from three-point range. Oats has experience in that conference and knew Sears could bring that level of play to the SEC.

"Yeah, what he did at Ohio, particularly in his second year, was pretty remarkable. When I got to Alabama, we kind of had our first few practices, me and the assistants that came from Buffalo with me to Alabama. We had quite a few kids at Buffalo that could have played here, really helped us. Kind of looked at what Mark was able to do in that league. That's a really good league," Oats said.

"After you brought it up, I looked on my phone. Mark is 4-1 here in Cleveland, so he's got an 80 percent winning percentage here. It's pretty good. I thought I was good, where I'm 9-1, but he's right there with me. So between the two of us, we've won a few games down here in the arena we're going to play in.

Oats praised the MAAC Conference and Sears' work ethic to turn into the player he is for the Crimson Tide today.

"It's a good league. I knew if he did what he did there, he could perform well. Now, I don't think anybody predicted what he's actually done here these last few years, but I knew he was going to be good enough to play for us. But even from his freshman year at Ohio to his sophomore year, he kind of came in and could score, but wasn't known as a shooter, so he turned himself into a shooter."

"The amount of work he puts in his game outside of practice on his own in the off-season, and when he came to Alabama, he didn't even go home. He came straight from Athens right to Tuscaloosa because he wanted to get a head start," Oats said.

"Just got himself an apartment for a month and just went to work. It's good to see guys that work hard get rewarded for their work, and I think Mark is a prime example of it, and I think the MAAC got him a great start, got him some confidence that he could play at a high level in college, and he kind of took that, ran with it, and he's done really well for his home state team in Alabama."

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Wyatt Fulton is the Tide 100.9 DME and Brand Manager, primarily covering Alabama Crimson Tide football and men's basketball. For more Crimson Tide coverage, follow Wyatt on X (Formerly known as Twitter) at @FultonW_.