Dan Hurley remembered the spaghetti.

When he came to visit Nate Oats’ Romulus High School team during his time as head coach at Rhode Island, he was impressed by how professionally Alabama’s current head coach ran the program in suburban Detroit. According to Hurley, now the head coach at UConn, it reminded him of his father, basketball Hall of Fame member Bob Hurley Sr.’s team.

“He was running a college program in high school, just like my dad,” Hurley said Thursday in Glendale, Ariz. “If you went and watched St. Anthony’s, the way the program functioned, from the pregame meal that my dad was literally cooking on his own, to game day shootarounds, film session. The quality of what my dad was doing at the high school level was the quality of what the top programs in college were doing. Obviously based on the resources available.”

Hurley said Oats shared the same energy as his father. He visited Romulus to recruit E.C. Matthews as part of the 2013 class.

“I went and watched them before a state tournament game,” Hurley said. “Had one of the most detailed video scouts that you’ll see, and then back, they had spaghetti cooking on the stove. You could see he was a high-level guy that just happened to be coaching in (high school).

According to Oats, he would have been OK if he had never left Romulus. That wasn’t his attitude when he first arrived after working as a Division III assistant.

He said he would have taken any Division I assistant job at the time. The longer he stayed at Romulus, the pickier he got.

He credited the change in attitude in part to Bob Hurley Sr., who Oats said turned down multiple college head coaching jobs to stay in high school.

“I could stay here and be a very successful basketball coach and be happy with it,” Oats said. “Seems like every time you get that way in life, a pretty good opportunity comes up. Kind of when I got the point I was working hard, I wasn’t just grinding to get to a college job. Let’s do this the best I can because that’s the way we should do it. Then I had a pretty good opportunity come up.”

The intersection with Dan was a major moment in Oats’ career. After building Romulus into a powerhouse, he took his first Division I assistant job with Dan’s brother, Bob Jr. at Buffalo.

When Bobby left for a bigger gig at Arizona State, Oats got his first college head coach assignment with the Bulls. Eventually, Greg Byrne brought him to Alabama.

On Saturday, Oats and the Crimson Tide will play in the program’s first-ever Final Four game in Arizona. The opponent: Dan Hurley’s UConn squad.

“If it wasn’t for Danny and Bobby I wouldn’t be here,” Oats said. “We’re playing each other in Bobby’s town down here in Phoenix. Kind of funny how it comes full-circle. It would be nice if I wasn’t have to play against Danny’s team, because it’s a pretty good team.”

The Huskies are the overall No. 1 seed in the tournament, destroying everything in their path. Alabama is a No. 4 seed that upset North Carolina in the Sweet Sixteen and needed a comeback in the Elite Eight to take down Clemson.

Still, Hurley wasn’t taking his old friend’s team lightly.

“It will be the best offense that we’ve guarded this year,” Hurley said. “It’s as good as Illinois was. This is better just because they’re deeper, just more athletic, more guards that can break you down.”

In the past, Hurley has said he prefers to not face his brother on the court. Thursday, he said that applied early in the NCAA Tournament.

However, he was looking forward to Saturday, when the Tide and Huskies are scheduled to tip off at approximately 7:49 p.m. CT on TBS.

“I think I’m excited to compete against a friend in such a big spot,” Hurley said. “This is like the FInal Four. I think it kind of changes it a little bit for me because we’ve both done something incredible with the season. Somebody that I care about is going to play for a national title, preferably me. I also care about Nate, too, to a much lesser degree.”