As the country continues to deal with a pandemic, much is up in the air when it comes to the conference tournaments in college basketball.

One survey that came out on Thursday revealed that 1 in 4 NCAA men’s basketball coaches would be in favor of canceling conference tournaments this year.

However, don’t count Alabama coach Nate Oats among those in favor of canceling conference tourneys. During an appearance on “The Paul Finebaum Show” on Thursday, Oats explained what makes conference tournaments so important:

“The last conference tournament I played in was in the MAC (when he was the head coach at Buffalo),” he said. “We won 3 of the 4 when I was up there. To me, those are some of the most fun things you can get to. I think it’s experiences for your players. To win the NCAA Tournament would be unbelievable, but the odds of that happening are very, very, very small. The odds of winning the SEC Tournament are much larger than the NCAA Tournament. They’re both championships. Your kids are going to remember both for the rest of their lives. I would hate to take away a chance for our 5 seniors to win a championship.”

Will the Tide get a chance to compete for an SEC Tournament title? The 2020 tournament was canceled after only a couple of games. We’ll see if things are different this time around.