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Nate Oats losing Alabama assistant to head coaching job, per report
By Paul Harvey
Published:
Nate Oats has led Alabama basketball to new heights, leading the Crimson Tide into back-to-back Elite Eights and 3 straight Sweet 16 appearances. One more win would also give the Crimson Tide back-to-back trips to the Final Four for the first time in program history.
With that kind of performance, Oats has found assistant coaches from his staff in demand for head coaching jobs around the country. He’s now expected to lose another assistant coach to a head coaching job with the Tide preparing to face Duke on Saturday night.
According to college basketball insider Jon Rothstein, Alabama assistant Ryan Pannone is finalizing a deal that would make him the next head coach at Arkansas State. Pannone is only in his 2nd season with the program after coming to Tuscaloosa via an assistant coaching job with the New Orleans Pelicans in the NBA.
Remarkably, Pannone would be replacing another former Alabama assistant if he does indeed take the Arkansas State job. Bryan Hodgson, a piece of Oats’s initial Alabama staff in 2019, took the Arkansas State job in 2023 and led the program to a 45-28 overall record in 2 seasons and took the South Florida job after the Red Wolves were bounced from the NIT.
We’ll see how things develop, but Oats has once again built an impressive coaching staff, and he might have to rebuild it yet again in the offseason.
Paul Harvey lives in Atlanta and covers SEC football.
