Alabama Basketball: Nate Oats and Herbert Jones are SEC’s best coach and player

Alabama Basketball: The SEC announced Tuesday Nate Oats was voted SEC Coach of the Year while Herbert Jones named SEC Player of the Year.

Alabama Basketball is changing the SEC, based on the opinions of the league’s coaches. When the SEC announced its annual coach and player awards Tuesday, the biggest surprise was there were no surprises. Eric Musselman has done an excellent job at Arkansas this season, but Nate Oats has clearly been the SEC’s best coach.

The Alabama Crimson Tide has not had a head basketball coach win the award since 2002 when Mark Gottfried won it. With the addition of Oats, Alabama Basketball coaches have now won Coach of the Year seven times. The recognition given Oats was only the third time a Crimson Tide coach has won outright; Gottfried in 2002 and C.M. Newton in 1976 are the two others. Newton shared the award as the Alabama Basketball coach in 1972 and 1975. He also shared the award as the Vanderbilt head coach, with the Tide’s Wimp Sanderson in 1989. Sanderson shared the award with Hugh Durham in 1987.

The list of SEC Coaches of the Year has been dominated by Kentucky and Florida going back to 2008. The Wildcats’ John Calipari won the award in 2010, 2012, 2015 and 2020. Another Kentucky coach, Billy Gillespie won in 2008. Billy Donavan at Florida won the award in 2011, 2013 and 2014.

The SEC Player of the Year going to Herbert Jones was a small surprise. Jones is not in the top five SEC players in points, rebounds, assists, blocks, steals or field-goal percentage. He leads the Crimson Tide and the SEC in what Nate Oats calls ‘blue-collar’ points, marked by taking charges, diving for loose balls and a scrappiness typified by floor burns.

Jones is the Crimson Tide’s best player and the Tide is the league’s best team so the award is deserved. Jones was also recognized by the SEC coaches as the SEC Defensive Player of the Year. Alabama basketball fans knew in advance Herbert would win the defensive award. No other SEC player comes close to Jones as a defender.

Crimson Tide players have won SEC POTY six times with the Jones’ honor. Wendall Hudson won in 1973, along with Reggie King in 1978 and 1979; Derrick McKey in 1987 and Erwin Dudley in 2002.

Joining Herbert Jones on the SEC First Team was John Petty Jr. Jaden Shackelford was a Second Team Selection and Josh Primo was named to the All-Freshman team.

What Herbert Jones does best of all is make his teammates better. Putting the team first, over individual stats is the mark of an elite player. Nate Oats has had a big role in making Herbert Jones a complete player.