A season ago, UConn head coach Dan Hurley was on top of the world, cutting down the nets with his Huskies after winning the national championship.
When the clock struck zero, he joined legends like John Wooden and Roy Williams as former high school head coaches to win a national crown at the college level.
Hurley is back at the Final Four this season along with two more former high school head coaches in Kevin Keatts of North Carolina State and Nate Oats of Alabama.
Oats is in his fifth year at Alabama after taking over the position in
2019. His Crimson Tide won epic games over North Carolina and Clemson to
reach Phoenix, home of the 2024 Final Four.
A little more than 22 years ago he was as far from this level as one can get as the
Romulus (Mich.)
head coach. Over 11 years with the Eagles, Oats won 222 games and led
his squad to a state championship victory. In 2013 Buffalo was
recruiting one of his players and head coach Bobby Hurley liked what he
saw from Oats. He hired him as a college assistant. When Bobby left for
Arizona State two years later in 2015, Oats was elevated to head coach.
Now Oats will take on Bobby's brother Dan on Saturday night in the Final Four.
The
sons of a Basketball Hall of Famer, Dan and Bobby won a high school
national championship as players for their father Bob Hurley Sr. at
St. Anthony (Jersey City, N.J.) in 1989. After a 1,000-point career at Seton Hall, Dan became a coach.
He took over
St. Benedict's Prep (Newark, N.J.)
and did nothing but win. From 2001-10, Hurley stepped on the floor as a
head coach 244 times and walked off of it with a win on 221 occasions.
He coached six McDonald's All Americans including J.R. Smith, who was a
first round pick straight out of the New Jersey high school in 2004.
Smith won an NBA championship 12 years later with Tristan Thompson,
another St. Benedict's player who suited up for Dan in high school.
Dan then worked his way up the college head coaching ladder, going from Wagner to Rhode Island to UConn in 2018.
Hurley's
UConn squad is favored to be cutting down the championship
nets Monday night. If the Huskies are successful, he would join
Henry Iba, Adolph Rupp, Phil Woolpert and John Wooden as the only former
high school head coaches to win back-to-back college crowns.
If Oats or Keatts win the title, they would become the 20th former high school head coach to win a national championship.
Keatts coached the post-graduate program at
Hargrave Military Academy (Chatham, Va.) for more than a decade. He was first an assistant from 1997-99 and then head coach from 1999-2001 and 2003-11.
The Tigers were dominant in that span as Keatts compiled 263 victories against 17 losses with a pair of national prep titles.
He coached four McDonald's All Americans and 12 future NBA players. Several of his former players have had March Madness magic of their own, including Joe Alexander for West Virginia in 2008 and Luke Hancock at Louisville in 2013.
Keatts became an assistant coach at Louisville and won a national title with Hancock in 2013. In 2014 Keatts became a head coach at UNC Wilmington before taking the North Carolina State job in 2017. This season the Wolfpack went on an improbable run to win the ACC Tournament and reach the Final Four after going 17-14 in the regular season.
North Carolina State will play Purdue in the first semifinal game Saturday night.
