Nate Oats Signs New Contract Through 2031-32, Will Be Top 5 Highest-Paid Coach
Nate Oats signed a new contract with Alabama that will make him one of the five highest-paid coaches in college basketball.
Oats’ new deal will run through the 2031-32 season, according to ESPN.
Since Oats took over the program in 2019, he has guided the team to five Sweet 16 appearances and one Final Four run.
The school also earned their first No. 1 seed in the tournament in 2023.
How did Michigan evolve into national title favorite? It aced the transfer portal
INDIANAPOLIS – Dusty May is a self-described “blue-collar guy” who cut grass, cut tobacco, baled hay and worked in turkey barns growing up in Greene County, Indiana, where he learned that “if you see a neighbor moving in, you go help them.”
So when Michigan point guard Elliot Cadeau arrived on campus last year as a transfer from North Carolina, May was there to help carry a table up a flight of stairs to the junior’s new apartment.
“When a player is moving in, it’s a lot quicker if we walk across the parking lot and help them move in rather than just mom and dad,” said May. “It’s kind of how we run our program.”
And Michigan’s program runs on transfers such as Cadeau, who after two often tumultuous seasons with the Tar Heels has found a home and flourished on the Wolverines’ newcomer-heavy roster.
“I think that just comes from the coaching. They have so much confidence in me,” Cadeau said after Michigan’s Final Four win against Arizona. “It just helps me stay calm. If I turn the ball over and I look over at coach, they’re calm. So that just helps me stay calm as well.”
There is no bigger test for a major-conference program and coach than personnel management, the annual acquisition and blending of talent in an era of NIL and rampant player movement.
May and Michigan have aced this test with flying colors, piecing together a rotation largely composed of portal additions to evolve into a seemingly unstoppable force heading into Monday night’s national championship game against Connecticut.
“It came together even better than we could ever imagine,” said assistant coach and general manager Kyle Church.
The Wolverines have done so by stressing three assets when evaluating transfers, said May.
While production and potential play a role in deciding who Michigan pursues out of the transfer portal, the search ultimately centers on “guys how love ball, who are great teammates, who are competitors,” he said.
“Competitors because we have a strong belief that competitors are going to figure out a way to win. Whatever that is, they’re just going to figure out a way to win whatever they’re playing.
“And then loving ball would probably be a close, close second. Sometimes we say we don’t really care. You can love to compete or you can love ball. We think we can get to the end result as long as you have one of those.”
Leaning on personality and cultural fit has helped the Wolverines divvy up minutes among one of the deepest and most talented rosters in the country.
“Now, what makes Dusty May special as a coach is obviously his eye for talent, his ability to construct a roster, the fact that he insulates himself with an excellent coaching staff, and his ability to build team and culture. Like he’s got a special eye for how to put together a great team,” Connecticut coach Dan Hurley said.
“Things are volatile. It’s year to year. You’ve got to have the skill set to do it on a year-to-year basis because things are volatile.”
Of the eight players in the Wolverines’ tournament rotation, six started their college careers elsewhere and transferred into the program. The exceptions are redshirt senior forward Will Tschetter and freshman guard Trey McKenney.
Two joined the program at least two seasons ago: guard Roddy Gayle Jr. transferred from Ohio State before May’s debut in 2024, and former Texas Tech and Alabama guard Nimari Burnett enrolled in 2023, when the Wolverines were led by former coach Juwan Howard.
“During the summer, I just told the guys that everything is going to happen quickly,” Gayle said. “Especially under coach May, you may not understand what he’s asking of you early on. But once you just buy into his program, buy into what he’s telling you, everything will work out just fine. I’m a true believer in that.”
The four transfers who arrived this past summer have transformed Michigan from Big Ten contender to the favorite to capture the program’s second national championship.
“I would say we have the right people around this program, and we have the right players,” McKenney said. “We have players that are really selfless, and you can tell that even when we’re under one roof in the summer, so I think it just really carried over from the summer and the fall when we were putting in all that work together and all that sweat that we had.”
None have bigger than Alabama-Birmingham forward Yaxel Lendeborg. The All-America selection has been a remarkably consistent inside-out threat in an offense that can still flourish in his absence, as in the Final Four blowout of Arizona.
Former UCLA center Aday Mara has taken on a starting role after coming off the bench for the Bruins and has evolved into a dominant interior presence. He scored a career-best 26 points in the win against the Wildcats.
Sophomore forward Morez Johnson Jr. has made a similar leap after transferring from Illinois, showcasing the strength and athleticism that have made him a likely first-round pick in this year’s NBA draft. And Cadeau has stabilized his game in Ann Arbor, with a newfound sense of confidence in his shooting that has given Michigan yet another perimeter threat.
Between the 7-3 Mara, 6-10 Johnson and 6-9 Lendeborg, the Wolverines added major size to the frontcourt this offseason. In that way, they resemble May’s Final Four team at Florida Atlantic, where the Owls “were so big, our defensive numbers were top five in the country,” he said.
But the Wolverines aren’t “married to being big,” May added. “If everybody goes big, we might weave and go small. Who knows? We’re not winning because we’re big. We’re winning because we have really good players and smart players.”
Overall, transfers have combined for 75.6% of Michigan’s scoring. Transfers are the Wolverines’ four leading rebounders. The top three in assists are transfers, and so are the top four in blocks per game.
“You can build a cohesive unit maybe a little bit faster than anyone can really realize,” Church said. “If people like the work and enjoy the process, then you can find that cohesion fairly quickly.”
But the recruitment of players in the transfer portal is much different than traditional recruiting on the high school level, when programs can often spend months to years building relationships.
In comparison, recruiting the portal is like speed dating. Given the abbreviated courtship, Michigan will do background work on a prospective transfer by “leaning on people around them that you trust,” Church said, including the player’s former coaching staff, coaches they might have played against or their former high school and AAU coach. If the Wolverines are lucky, they may have a preexisting relationship by virtue of recruiting the player coming out of high school.
“We try to be brutally honest,” said Church. “And we try to over-deliver and under-promise. If they want to come under those circumstances and we feel like we have a good character reference and they like playing hard, they like passing the ball, they like basketball, then we’ll find a way to make it work.”
Yet none of these transfers were necessarily a sure thing, and many arrived as underdeveloped or inconsistent producers at their previous stops. There’s no greater example of this than Cadeau, who failed to deliver on his five-star billing at UNC and was seen as the poster child for the Tar Heels’ unrealized expectations.
Lendeborg came from UAB. Johnson was a backup at Illinois, though his explosiveness was obvious even in this reserve role. Mara’s career never got off the ground at UCLA. In one way or another, each new addition this offseason represented a roll of the dice for May and Michigan.
“Look, I know this is going to set off a Twitter firestorm, but I think we all are better in certain situations than others,” May said. “There’s an environment that’s right for me. There’s an environment that’s right for you. Sometimes you don’t choose the right environment from the beginning or sometimes as people we change and we need something different, for a number of reasons.
“The way we choose to look at it, we’re going to bring in really, really good guys that are high achievers, that want to do it the way we want to do it.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How Dusty May built Michigan basketball roster by acing transfer portal
Dan Hurley’s players recall his angriest practice tirades: ‘That was my Welcome to UConn moment’
INDIANAPOLIS — Malachi Smith knew what he was getting into when he committed to UConn in the transfer portal last April. After four seasons at Dayton, Smith craved the intensity and success fostered by Dan Hurley’s Huskies. He had heard of stories of head coach’s legendary practice tirades, and it didn’t take long for him to become the focal point of one.
Hurley was instructing Smith about passing reads during an early season practice when the senior guard gave a nonchalant acknowledgement that he heard the coach’s message.
“I said, ‘OK, bet,’” Smith recalled after UConn’s thrilling 2026 Final Four victory over Illinois on Saturday night. It turned out that was a poor choice of words.
“He told me, say ‘yes, coach,’ and I said, ‘yes coach,’” Smith said. “He said no, say ‘yes fucking coach.’ And I said, ‘yes, fucking coach.’ Ever since I’ve been saying ‘yes coach’ or ‘yes sir.’”
Hurley is 40 minutes away from his third national championship in four years when UConn faces the Michigan Wolverines in the title game on Monday. The first two came pretty easily: the Huskies’ 2023 team won their six tournament games by an average margin of 20 points per game despite being a No. 4 seed. The following year’s team was even more dominant, out-scoring opponents by an average of 23.3 points in the tournament to become college basketball’s first back-to-back national champion since Billy Donovan’s Florida Gators in 2006-2007.
It didn’t always look like this year’s Huskies would be playing on the final day of the season. UConn lost to an under .500 Creighton team at home in the middle of February. A few weeks later, it lost the last game of the regular season to a terrible Marquette team that finished only 12-20 overall. UConn even entered the NCAA tournament on a sour note after it got drilled by 20 points against St. John’s in the Big East tournament championship game, which finalized its destiny as a No. 2 seed.
Hurley once again has his team peaking at the right time, even without the obvious NBA lottery talent he enjoyed two years ago with Donovan Clingan and Stephon Castle leading his team. He’s also had to keep his staff focused even after top assistant Luke Murray accepted Boston College’s head coaching job with the transfer portal already unofficially underway.
“The year hasn’t been a joyride,” Hurley said after the win over Illinois. “We haven’t been a machine of destruction. We’ve been a team that’s had to grind out games like this.”
In what ways have Hurley’s previous two national championship runs changed the head coach? Senior forward Alex Karaban, a four-year starter who is also going for his third ring, scoffed at me even asking the question.
“He hasn’t changed at all,” Karaban said. “He’s the same guy. If anything winning has only made him hungrier for more.”
It seems like every UConn player has a story about the fire that still burns inside of Hurley. When asked about the private moments they’ll remember five or 10 years from now, the Huskies couldn’t hide their smiles thinking back on their coach’s antics.
Tarris Reed didn’t dunk the ball during an early season pick-and-roll drill this winter, and Dan Hurley was completely disgusted by it. He decided the punishment would be to make the entire team run the stairs at UConn’s practice facility.
The Huskies got back to business, and Reed again finished the drill with a layup. Hurley made the team run the stairs again, only this time the whole coaching staff had to do it with them. As his players and coaches were huffing and puffing on the steps, Hurley was ranting. He’s yelling at Reed for not dunking. He’s screaming at the rest of his team for not encouraging their star teammate to dunk more often. He’s also ranting at the coaches for having the audacity to bring in players who don’t dunk the ball in practice or hold their teammates accountable to dunking.
Silas Demary was one of UConn’s biggest additions in the portal this season. Last year’s Huskies were faulty in two areas: at point guard and on defense. Demary helped fix both of those problems when he transferred in after two years at Georgia. Demary could barely hold back his laughter thinking about the first time he tasted Hurley’s wrath.
“It was in August at our first real practice,” he said. “It was a rough practice for me.”
A ball got tipped out of bounds and Demary jogged after it. Bad move.
“He was irate,” Demary recalled on Sunday ahead of the national championship game. “He was pissed off about it.”
Hurley threw a ball beyond the reach of teammate Solo Ball and told him to show Demary how UConn goes after loose balls. Ball sprinted hard after it and immediately dove on the floor to recover it. Then he made everyone get in a line as he whipped balls all over the court and made them hit the floor to dive for it.
“That was my ‘welcome to UConn moment,’” Demary said with a smile.
Jaylin Stewart thought back to a moment during his freshman season on the dominant 2024 championship team. There was a turnover in practice, and Hurley lost it. He decided to deal with this crime against basketball by laying down in the middle of the floor while play continued back and forth.
Stewart was a top-100 recruit out of high school, but he hasn’t much played in his first three years at UConn. He’s an opportunity to transfer out and find more playing time at another program every offseason, but he keeps coming back. Why?
“Coach believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself.”
Stewart actually found himself on the floor during a crucial stretch in the second half of UConn’s Final Four win against Illinois. The Illini were starting to make a comeback with about 12 minutes left when Stewart checked in for Karaban. Ball found him spotted up behind the arc. Stewart lined up the shot and knocked it down for a big three.
Hurley loves his players even if he also likes to show them up in practice by cursing them out and wearing his emotions on his sleeve. There may be times when Hurley’s antics start to wear thin, but overall message never gets lost.
“We want rings and not watches,” Smith said on Saturday night. (Hurley) has been saying that every day. So that just makes us lock in.”
Everything to know of 2026 Men's NCAA Tournament championship game
Just one more game until a national champion is crowned for the 2026 men’s college basketball season.
With 66 games in the books, the stage has been set for No. 1 Michigan and No. 2 Connecticut to face off in the 2026 Men’s NCAA Tournament national championship game.
While Dan Hurley and the Huskies look to make history with their third championship in four seasons, Dusty May will look to help the Wolverines end a 37-year drought with the program’s first national title since 1989.
UConn defeated No. 3 seed Illinois 71-62 to advance to the title game, while Michigan torpedoed Arizona 91-73 to win another game by double figures during an impressive NCAA Tournament run.
Here’s everything you need to know about the 2026 men’s NCAA national championship game, from the time to the TV channel.
The men’s national title game tips off on Monday, April 6, at 8:50 p.m. ET.
The 2026 Men’s NCAA Tournament national championship game will be held at Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts.
The men’s title game will be broadcast nationally on TBS, TNT and truTV, with Ian Eagle (play-by-play), Bill Raftery (analyst), Grant Hill (analyst) and Tracy Wolfson (sideline reporter) on the call from the game.
The men’s NCAA Tournament national championship game can be streamed on NCAA March Madness Live (with a valid cable login), HBO Max, which requires a subscription, and Sling TV , which carries Turner Broadcast stations.
Last year, Todd Golden and Walter Clayton Jr. led Florida to the program’s third national championship with a 65-63 win over Kelvin Sampson and Houston in the title game.
There won’t be a back-to-back champion this year after Iowa took down the Gators in the second round of the NCAA Tournament this season.
Here’s a look at the year-by-year NCAA Tournament national champions in men’s basketball, since 2006. The full list can be found here:
* vacated by NCAA
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: March Madness men’s championship game date, time, TV, odds, more to know
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