Nate Oats on Saturday apologized publicly to Mike Krzyzewski for criticizing the legendary Duke coach.
After Duke lost to Illinois at home on Tuesday, Coach K questioned playing during a pandemic. Duke later announced that they wouldn’t play any more non-conference games.
Oats, who is in his second season as Alabama’s head coach, threw some shade at Coach K, saying he wouldn’t say that if Duke hadn’t lost two non-conference games.
On Saturday, Oats walked it back.
“I want to publicly apologize to Coach K for what I said. … I actually felt terrible about it after the press conference. I reached out to him. He was gracious enough to return my call. I have the utmost respect for him as a coach,” Oats said.
Oats made his remarks after Alabama lost in Atlanta 64-56 to Clemson to fall to 3-2. Oats says he learned from his remark.
“It was unnecessary. It was wrong. I apologized to him. We had a good talk. I understand now a lot better where he’s coming from. What’s best for one program might not be best for another. I learned lessons from it.”
Maybe Oats made his remarks impetuously and once he started seeing how many headlines he made, he felt the need to make peace.
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