Nate Oats, the newly hired basketball coach at Alabama, has a reputation for being a lunatic on the sidelines during games, so he’s not hard to miss.

In the 2018 NCAA Tournament, it was more than Oats’ stomping and screaming that made Alabama athletics director Greg Byrne take notice. In the first round of the tournament, Oats and his underdog Buffalo upset Byrne’s former employer, Arizona, which at the time featured the future No.1 overall pick in the 2018 NBA Draft, Deandre Ayton.

Oats is a frenetic, high-energy, powder keg during games, and his teams play exactly like he coaches.

They are fun to watch, and dizzyingly fast and he gets the most out of his players (especially the guards). Byrne penciled Oats and his oversized sideline persona on his short list of potential hires if the right opportunity ever presented itself. A year later, it did.

Needing a coach who can get the most out of a roster in a conference full of top-flight talent, Byrne wasted no time in turning to Oats to be Alabama’s new basketball coach after parting ways with Avery Johnson. Alabama’s director of athletics held a news conference on Monday to announce Alabama’s coaching vacancy, and he hired Oats on Wednesday.

It’s a bold move by Byrne, who will now be judged by the success of a complete SEC outsider in a conference that is getting more difficult every season. Alabama was one of four SEC basketball teams to change coaches in the last few weeks. Byrne was the first to hire a replacement.

For Alabama, it didn’t work out for the last coach from outside the conference’s coaching circles, but that’s where the comparisons between Oats and Johnson end. Johnson was a former NBA coach who had little experience in the college game. Oats is a grinder from the opposite end of the basketball coaching spectrum.

A former high school math teacher, Oats coached preps out by the Detroit Wayne County Airport for 12 years (Romulus High School) before getting his big break … at Buffalo … as an assistant, just months after his high school team won a state championship. At the time, Buffalo had never made the NCAA Tournament.

It’s not about where you start, though, and there are plenty of people in Alabama who might not be able to name Buffalo’s mascot (it’s the Bulls), but can relate to the blue-collar basketball approach of the school’s most successful coach. He rewards “hustle points” to his players for the type of plays that win games, but do not necessarily show up in box scores, and he then gives the winner of the hustle competition a hard hat.

Alabama had a coach of the hard-hat variety for over 30 years. His name was Wimp Sanderson, and Alabama hasn’t had a coach half as tough (or half as animated) as him since he retired in 1992.

Mental toughness is what Johnson’s teams lacked, and what cost him his job in the end. Now it will be up to Oats to quickly establish that culture amid a conference that has placed at least seven teams in back-to-back NCAA tournaments. It should have been eight this year, but Alabama imploded down the stretch.

Oats will begin recruiting immediately and that has to start with Alabama’s current players, four who have entered the transfer portal. Point guard Kira Lewis Jr. would thrive anywhere, but why leave Alabama after a failed season with Johnson? He should at least listen to Oats’ plan for his new team. Oats’ guards shut down Arizona’s guards in that famous NCAA Tournament upset, and former Zona guard Allonzo Trier now plays for the Knicks.

Wingman John Petty, who has also entered the transfer portal, hasn’t live up to his potential at Alabama, but Buffalo shooting guard C.J. Massinburg was just named Mid-American Conference Player of the Year. Massinburg didn’t receive many scholarship offers out of high school.

The McDonald’s All-American game is on Wednesday night. Perhaps Oats will arrive in time to introduce himself to Mountain Brook forward Trendon Watford. Oats will need some star power to compete in this new SEC landscape that features four teams in this weekend’s Sweet 16.

This isn’t a can’t miss, slam-dunk hire for Byrne, but it’s a smart play. He needed to hire someone quickly. Can anymore Alabama basketball players fit into the transfer portal?

All of Alabama’s most successful basketball coaches have had ties to the state or the South. In a league full of excellent coaches, Byrne has gone outside the SEC’s footprint. How will Oats navigate that path? At least one athletics director other than Byrne probably thinks Oats is going to do just fine.

Auburn athletics director Allen Greene was hired at Buffalo around the same time as Oats and, a few years later, was the AD who signed Oats to a five-year extension. On Wednesday, he congratulated Byrne on his new hire in a tweet.

Oats was probably on Greene’s short list, too.

Joseph Goodman is a columnist for the Alabama Media Group. He’s on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.