Nate Oats, the head coach of Alabama basketball, has reportedly hit the reset button on his personal life. After quietly ending a 26-year marriage, Oats is now engaged to former staffer Alex Accetta. Plot twist: nobody saw coming, but everyone is now talking about.
Let’s start with the timing. The divorce? Kept so low-key it might as well have been in witness protection. No dramatic headlines, no messy social media rants. Just a smooth, silent exit. Then boom! engagement news drops like a surprise buzzer-beater.
And not just to anyone. Accetta isn’t some random person he met at a coffee shop. She was part of the Crimson Tide staff. You know, where Oats previously worked. Nothing raises eyebrows quite like mixing business with future wedding planning.
Oats, 51, casually dropped the shocking admission during a Friday, April 3 appearance on the Sirius XM college sports channel.
“Me and Alex [Accetta] — my fiancée now, she was my girlfriend at the time — we were at a Knicks playoff game, and I’m sitting there at [Madison Square] Garden,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Hold on.’ I’m a high school coach and I got an opportunity to coach in here, and I’m gonna say no?”
Accetta, 30, began working for Alabama athletics in 2015 while she was a student, according to her LinkedIn page. She worked as an operations coordinator until her graduation in 2017, when she joined the men’s basketball staff as director of basketball operations.
While she worked for Alabama, Accetta was one of only six women to serve in a coach or support staff role for a major conference men’s basketball team, according to her Alabama athletics bio. The bio also says she was in charge of “oversight of the men’s basketball budget, managers and graduate assistant managers, as well as the day-to-day schedules for both the team and head coach Nate Oats.”
End of the road for Oats and Crystal and a new beginning for him and Alex Accetta.
Nate married his ex-wife, Crystal, in 1997, while he was working as an assistant at his alma mater, Maranatha Baptist University in Watertown, Wisconsin. The two share daughters Lexie, 22, Jocelyn, 16, and Brielle, 13. Crystal was diagnosed with Lymphoma in 2015. After undergoing aggressive treatment, she went into remission in 2016.
As for Accetta, she just went from fomer staffer to headline news overnight. Talk about a career shift. One minute you’re doing your job, next minute you’re trending.
It appears they started dating when she worked for Oats.
Accetta assists with a multitude of projects throughout the year, including oversight of the men’s basketball budget, managers and graduate assistant managers, as well as the day-to-day schedules for both the team and head coach Nate Oats. In addition, she handles all team travel logistics and coordination as well as ticket coordination for the program. Accetta also serves as the oversight for all men’s basketball off-court events such as Pro Day, Parents Weekend, Alabama basketball camps and guest speakers.
Sherrone Moore has to be fuming.
