This is an opinion piece.

Nate Oats said the magic words a week ago during the Tide on Tour stop in Birmingham, boldly going where no basketball team in school history has gone before.

“We got a chance to win a national championship with the team we’ve got coming back,” Oats said.

Unless he knew something then that we didn’t know for sure, the team he had coming back at that moment did not include the All-American guard who owns the program’s single-season points record. It does now.

On the last day for early NBA Draft entrants to declare whether they would stay in the draft or return to school, Mark Sears chose to run it back with the Crimson Tide. His Instagram post sharing the news was more colorful while his Twitter message was no frills, devoid of photography, punctuation and excessive emotion.

X marked the spot where he simply said at 5:16 p.m., “Last dance #rolltide” with four elephant emojis marching tail to trunk to the left.