Q. This is a little off topic and a little lighthearted, but what have you thought of the way Brady has handled the challenges this season?

NATE OATS: Yeah, Brady Goka started with us as a manager, was really good — we’ve got an army of managers, a bunch of kids willing to serve the program, and it’s great having them in. Some are just there to be a part of the basketball program. Some are there to find their way up in the coaching world.

He was one that we knew, came back from my connections in Michigan, and he’s from Michigan, close to Saginaw. Him and Preston have a little debate. Brady claims Saginaw, but it’s really not Saginaw, it’s out in the country by Saginaw. But he came from my connections in Michigan. He came down, was a manager, then he became a grad assistant. Kind of migrated towards the video room, really got into the coaching part.

This is the first year you’ve got replays in college, so we gave it to our video coordinator. He should be good with video, that’s why he’s the video coordinator.

He’s been pretty good. Honestly, I think Brady has been good. I think it’s been more everybody in college basketball figuring out appeals, challenges. Because we appealed some plays that one game, you’d win that appeal and the next game, it’s a more egregious flagrant one than this one and you don’t win it. And then all of a sudden, you turn the TV on and it’s — I can’t figure out what should have been a flag want one and what’s not.

I think in light of everybody being new and figuring it out and everybody is trying to work through it, the referees, people in charge of it all, I think he’s done a pretty good job.

Look, the guy that’s in that role, like, you’d better have some thick skin because if you screw one up, especially — now, the appeals are different. You can screw up an appeal, you just lose the time-out. You can get multiple unlimited appeals. I guess if you run out of time-outs, you can still appeal, you just get a T for calling a time-out you don’t have. You’ll never run out of appeals.

Now, the challenges you only have two, so if you screw up a challenge play — again, the referees are figuring out the rules, too. Because we challenged at Auburn, lost it, lost our challenge for the rest of the game. They called a goal tend against us that was incorrectly called in the last two minutes. And I need to be better aware of the rules, as do the referees, but the refs are supposed to go review that in the last two minutes. And I was about ready to kill Brady because we didn’t have our challenge left, and I couldn’t review it. It actually was supposed to be the referees that review it in the last two minutes.

Look, Brady has been great with it. He’s quick. He’s smart. He gets a little help from Adam Bauman over there. Brian Adams, our one assistant that runs the defense sent out a — we’ve got a coaches’ and GAs kind of group chat. There was another program that their challenge drew behind had some — I think Brian Adams’ direct term was Thorkapalooza over there with all these cool handshakes.

I said, Brady, are we going to get like this with our cool handshake. Just don’t try to do no Thorkapalooza handshake with me after we win an appeal.

We’ll try to win the appeals. We’ll try to use it correctly. We’ll use it to our advantage when we can. I think Brady and Adam and our whole video crew has done a good job with it, but we’re still all trying to figure it out this year.