Walk-on Kai Spears awarded scholarship by Nate Oats, Alabama basketball
Nate Oats and the Alabama men’s basketball are currently sitting atop the SEC standings as we close in on the halfway point of the conference slate and Tide fans must be pleased with the progress the team has made this season.
On Friday Coach Oats made the surprise announcement that the basketball program has awarded walk-on guard Kai Spears with an athletic scholarship.
The sophomore from Pittsburgh has spent the last two seasons with the Tide and has appeared in a total of seven games.
Coach Oats had the following to say about Spears and what went into deciding to put Spears on scholarship.
“Super happy for him. He’s a great kid. He works really hard. He deserves it – as does Max (Scharnowski). We kind of had both those guys that are our multi-year walk-ons, you look at those guys, and anytime we have a scholarship available and we’ve got a great walk-on that’s doing what he’s supposed to do, we’re going to reward him with it.”
“It was one of those deals where you have 13 scholarships, and you’ve got an open one,” Oats said. “We wanted to make sure nobody filled it at the break, kind of like Davin (Cosby) did last year. We looked at Max. Max has been here longer, and we would have gave it to Max, but Max is on a really good academic scholarship. So Kai needed it a little bit more than Max.
“We kind of sat the two of them down and discussed it and let Kai know that we were going to give it to him. … We had the two of them up in my office yesterday. They both gave each other big hugs and were crying. They were both really happy. It was a cool moment. But yeah, we did put him on scholarship for this year.”
Congratulations to Spears for earning the final scholarship slot on the Alabama men’s basketball team.
Roll Tide Wire will continue to follow Oats, Spears, and the Tide as the basketball season progresses.
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