The longer Nate Oats coached at Romulus High School outside of Detroit, the more comfortable he felt with his position in the coaching hierarchy.
“I realized I could stay here and be a very successful basketball coach and be happy with it,” Oats said. “Seems like every time you kind of get that way in life, a pretty good opportunity comes up.” Purdue’s Matt Painter is the only Final Four coach with college-only experience, starting with an assistant job at Washington & Jefferson College in Pennsylvania after playing guard for the Boilermakers.
“Obviously, there’s opportunity at the high school level, through trial and error, without college pressure, to kind of work on your craft as a coach,” Hurley said. “You get to develop in every way as a coach.”