GLENDALE, Ariz. – Antoine Pettway sat back, chewed on his sandwich and munched on his chips. Meanwhile, Mark Sears talked on the phone at the Subway.

That day in April 2022, on the campus at Ohio University, Sears was calling to tell coaches at other programs he wouldn’t be joining them. The guard phoned the likes of Gonzaga, Texas and more. He told them he knew where he was going. He would be playing for Alabama basketball.

That day, Sears was going to announce to the world he was transferring from Ohio to the Crimson Tide. The Muscle Shoals native was returning home.

He posted the graphic right there at the Subway with Pettway, who was then an Alabama basketball assistant coach.

“It was just amazing to see the delight in his face because he was going to have a chance to live out his dream and play for the University of Alabama,” Pettway told the Tuscaloosa News on Wednesday.

That decision not only changed Sears’ life, but it also would change Alabama basketball. Sears, two years later, has been the best player on the first Crimson Tide men’s team to reach the Final Four. Sears and Alabama will face UConn on Saturday at State Farm Stadium.

“I wanted to lead a team to get to the Final Four,” Sears said Thursday. “When I was in the transfer portal, that’s what I was telling every coach that recruited me: ‘I want to have the opportunity to lead you to the Final Four.’”

Two years later, he fulfilled it.

How did Alabama make the move and land a player who would eventually lead the Crimson Tide to the Final Four? Here’s the backstory of the program-altering roster move.

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Derek Rongstad walked into Pettway’s office two years ago with a message. Then Alabama’s video coordinator, Rongstad had to pass on what he learned about Sears.

This kid is better than anybody we’re recruiting. We need to jump all over him. This kid is really freaking good.

From that day on, Alabama was all in on trying to add Sears, who was in the transfer portal.

The Crimson Tide wanted to bring in a veteran guard. It had all kinds of exciting young talent set to join (Brandon Miller, Noah Clowney, etc.) but it wanted some experience to go with those youngsters. Enter Sears, who had spent two seasons at Ohio.

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Pettway, now the head coach at Kennesaw State, had known about Sears since he was 15. Pettway had watched him play on the AAU circuit. But Alabama, and most schools, didn’t offer Sears. He only had a few offers coming out of high school, and none at the high-major level.

Pettway said Sears has always been a competitor and made winning plays, but Sears’ shooting wasn’t as good back then. So he didn’t get recruited much.

“Mark was less than lightly recruited,” AAU coach Scott Whittle said in 2023. “I have been on in-home visits with coaches where I thought they were going to offer him, then they didn’t.”

That changed after two seasons at Ohio. Sears shot 40.8% from beyond the arc his second season and averaged 19.6 points, 5 rebounds and 4.1 assists per game.

Pettway started hearing Sears’ name again while talking to a scout who mentioned his next stop would be a trip to Ohio to watch Sears.

“That kind of sparked my interest,” Pettway said.

Once Sears decided to enter the transfer portal, a host of schools were interested in him. His hard work at Ohio had paid off.

“I just had the mentality that I want to prove people wrong,” Sears told The Tuscaloosa News in 2023. “That’s really how I looked at it. I just knew if I put my head down and kept working, good things were going to come.”

And they did, including an offer to play in his home state. Alabama was the first team to call the day he went into the transfer portal. It was Pettway who rang.

You ready to come home?

The press from Nate Oats

Sears didn’t make the decision to commit that first time Pettway called. He had to think about it first, of course.

That gave Alabama coach Nate Oats a chance to develop a relationship with Sears. Oats told Sears the plan Alabama had for him and how it would use him. He showed Sears that the Crimson Tide had a young talented team coming in, and that Alabama could be elite if it had a guy who can handle and shoot the ball such as Sears.

“Coach Oats did a tremendous job,” Pettway said. “He recruited him hard after we identified this was the guy we wanted to go after.”

After one conversation with Sears wrapped up, Oats immediately called Pettway.

I think Mark knows what he wants to do.

Once Sears got together with his family and prayed about it, he “just had a good feeling about it,” he said.

Auburn coach Bruce Pearl called to offer Sears the morning he committed to Alabama, “but it was kind of too late for it for me to make any decision,” Sears said in 2023.

He was going with the school that had pursued him instantly. He was coming back home to play for Alabama. He made the choice without even taking an official visit.

“Seeing the success Coach Oats had in the previous years, I just really saw that I could fit in his system,” Sears said Thursday.

What is Mark Sears’ place in Alabama basketball history?

Sears was the second-leading scorer behind Brandon Miller on an Alabama team that won the SEC and was the No. 1 overall seed in the 2023 NCAA Tournament. Then Sears became even better this season.

With Miller off to the NBA, Sears took the lead in 2023-24. He has averaged 21.5 points per game, shooting 43.4% from deep while providing clutch shooting in the NCAA Tournament. His efforts this season earned him consensus second-team All-America honors. Sears now owns Alabama’s single-season scoring record, something he broke during the Sweet 16 game against UNC.

“Offensively, he’s been one of the best players in the country all year,” Oats said. “We would not be in the Final Four if it wasn’t for Mark Sears’ defense, leadership. He’s turned it around a lot in regard to that the last month.”  

So where does Sears rank among all-time Alabama players? There’s no better person to ask than Pettway, the former Alabama guard and assistant coach who grew up in the state.  

“We’ve had some great players come through the University of Alabama, but Mark Sears, he’s stamped his legacy,” Pettway said. “He had had one of the most memorable NCAA Tournaments in the history of the University of Alabama. He’s going to go down as a legend in my book.”

Nick Kelly is the Alabama beat writer for The Tuscaloosa News, part of the USA TODAY Network, and he covers Alabama football and men’s basketball. Reach him at nkelly@gannett.com or follow him @_NickKelly on X, the social media app formerly known as Twitter.