How Alabama HC Nate Oats uses analytics on the recruiting trail

Nate Oats has been stellar as head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide. His team is 22-5 this season and they're coming off a big win over No. 17 Kentucky.

The Tide have become a championship-level program under Oats in large part because of his ability as a coach, but also because of his ability as a recruiter. He's brought in players like Mark Sears, Brandon Miller and Herb Jones into Tuscaloosa, and it's in large part because he doesn't sugar coat anything with his players.

It's all about the numbers, as he recently told it to the media. When he evaluates his team and who is playing and who doesn't, he gives them the hard data to back it up.

“I tell the guys, we get enough data through the course of the year — practice data, game data — by this point of the season, the stats that we have are not luck based on small sample sizes. We’re either better with you on the floor on the defensive end, or we’re worse with you on the floor on the defensive end. And if we’re worst, we have all the data to show why," Oats recently explained, per Alex Byington of On3.

Oats talks the same way with the players he's trying to bring in to the program, too. 

“That’s the thing when we recruit guys, I tell them ‘I’m not going to promise you any amount of minutes, what will promise you is you’re going to get a fair shake and if you’re not playing as much as you want to play, you’re going to know exactly why.’ We’re going to sit you down and show you, we have plenty of stats to show guys why," he explained.

That transparency as well as building a type of program that let's a player's productivity — or lack thereof —talk for itself is undoubtedly one of the reasons Alabama has become one of the most competitive programs in college basketball.