This is an opinion column.

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A unique opportunity presented itself on Friday here in Lexington, Ky.

I had the chance to watch Alabama play Robert Morris in the NCAA Tournament while interviewing Auburn’s Chad Baker-Mazara. Throughout the interview, Baker-Mazara fed me updates on the action and even threw in some commentary, too.

Alabama was playing in Cleveland, and Auburn was at Rupp Arena, but anything is possible in this age of technology. Baker-Mazara had the Alabama game streaming on his smartphone during Auburn’s open locker room media session.

It made for some amusing content.

One after another, reporters kept asking Baker-Mazara if he was going to keep his emotions in check against Creighton. That’s a pretty tired angle at this point, though. We all know CBM plays best when he’s a little too excited.

“I try to be myself, but at the same time keep it cool, so I don’t hurt our team,” Baker-Mazara said. “I just try to learn that, and the guys are helping me with that — so just trying to keep my emotions in touch.”

If I were Johni Broome or assistant coach Steven Pearl, then I’d start every game from here on out by slapping Baker-Mazara in the face before tipoff.

Assistant coach Steven Pearl was critical of Baker-Mazara and Broome after Thursday’s 20-point victory against 16-seed Alabama State. So was someone else.

But it’s a new day. The sun shines upon Auburn once again. The Tigers have been the best team in the country all season and they take on No.9-seed Creighton at 6:10 p.m. CT on Saturday. I like the Tigers’ chances.

Bored with everyone’s questions, I kept asking Baker-Mazara for the score to the game streaming on the device in his lap.

Priorities, people.

“Ooh, 63-64, and Mark [Sears] just got blocked,” Baker-Mazara said. “Get that out of here, Mark! Just kidding.”

But not really.

Baker-Mazara was rooting for Alabama to lose. It didn’t happen, thankfully. The Tide pulled away from Robert Morris in the second half and won 90-81.

As a professional journalist, I’m not supposed to be rooting for any particular team in the Big Dance. Well, let’s be completely transparent about something. I am openly rooting for No.2-seed Alabama and No.1-seed Auburn to meet in the national championship.

Baker-Mazara was ejected in Auburn’s most recent game against Alabama. Hopefully he gets another shot at the Tide (but not literally, though, because that elbow on Chris Youngblood was pretty dirty).

Auburn practiced on Friday at Rupp Arena. The Tigers’ pre-practice locker room was open to reporters for 30 minutes. Miles Kelly’s locker was next to Baker-Mazara. They sat side-by-side. Kelly had on fuzzy slippers that looked like the paws of a black panther. “Black Panther” is his favorite movie and his sister gave him the slippers for Christmas. Baker-Mazara had on a stylish Auburn letterman’s jacket on top of an Auburn hooded sweatshirt with Aubie the mascot spinning a basketball on his claw.

It was a good look.

Not a good look … Auburn’s tourney opener against Alabama State. The Tigers were sloppy and coach Bruce Pearl was angry after the game. So was team leader Dylan Cardwell, who challenged his teammates with a passionate speech.

“I felt like we all had to hear that,” Baker-Mazara said. “We got a little lackadaisical yesterday and I feel like we had to hear that to get a little fire in us.”

Yeah, but what about that score to the Bama game?

“Still a one point game,” said Baker-Mazara, with a touch of hope in his voice.

Moments later, the Tide began to turn.

“Ahh,” CBM said, “Alabama just scored. It’s a three-point game, 65-68, with 5:56 left.”

He wanted Alabama to lose, naturally, because Baker-Mazara, as much as he tried, couldn’t hide his dislike for his school’s instate rival.

Baker-Mazara was asked if he prayed for Alabama’s downfall?

After first denying it, CBM admitted he wouldn’t mind if Alabama lost early in the NCAA Tournament.

“I don’t pray on anyone’s downfall,” he said, “but — man, you’re putting me [on the spot] on this one — but I want to see the SEC do good, but it is Bama, so, yeah, I do want them to lose.”

Baker-Mazara laughed and feigned embarrassment. He qualified the statement. His friend, Aden Holloway, plays for Alabama, and Baker-Mazara said, “I want Biz to do good.”

The NCAA Tournament is the greatest sports event every year, and it only seems to get better and better. It’s the one thing the leaders of collegiate athletics couldn’t get wrong even if they tried. Players like Baker-Mazara will always keep us guessing.

Baker-Mazara was kicked out of the first round last season, ejected for a cheap shot against Yale. CBM wants his chance at redemption and I hope he gets it. He’s too good of a player to go home early, and Auburn has the potential to be an all-time team.

What’s CBM’s favorite thing about March Madness?

“How unpredictable it is,” Baker-Mazara said. “You really don’t know who’s going to win. You go based off records and who’s playing the best, and all that, but you really don’t know because anyone can come beat you any day, for real, as long as you bring it.

“You might be good, but you don’t know who on the other team might be hot that day. The basketball gods might be on their side and they come to win.”

The basketball gods are real, and CBM is in luck. They’re not in the business of awarding karma, just tough defense and soft touches at the rim.

BE HEARD

Got a question for Joe? Want to get something off your chest? Send Joe an email about what’s on your mind. Let your voice be heard. Ask him anything.

Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of the book “We Want Bama: A Season of Hope and the Making of Nick Saban’s Ultimate Team.”

OAK GROVE, Ala.—For the first time, an Alabama official has said that a fatal March 2024 home explosion above an expanding longwall mine in the central part of the Yellowhammer State was “likely” caused by the ignition of methane, a gas produced in the mining of coal. 

The revelation came in a letter from Kathy Love, director of one of the state’s mining oversight agencies, to federal officials who had demanded state regulators act to mitigate the risk of escaping methane in the wake of the March blast that led to the death of Oak Grove resident W.M. Griffice. 

Love had refused to release a copy of the letter, but Inside Climate News obtained the document—the state’s only formal response to an unprecedented regulatory action by the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement—through a Freedom of Information Act request of federal officials. 

Both state and federal officials had previously avoided attributing the explosion to escaping methane, despite the continued release of the potentially explosive gas at the site of Griffice’s home, which was completely destroyed in the blast. A state fire marshal’s investigation into the explosion had deemed the cause of the blast “undetermined.”

In court documents related to a wrongful death suit filed by Griffice’s family, lawyers for Crimson Oak Grove Resources, the operators of the mine, have denied the private coal company is responsible for the explosion or Griffice’s death. The coal company did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

In the letter dated Jan. 14, Love suggested that the home explosion was a tragedy that could not have been envisioned by the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act , the 1977 federal law governing longwall mining in the United States. 

“The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA) was written to protect the public and environment from hazards created by coal mining,” Love wrote. “And yet in 1977 the authors of the SMCRA regulations could not have envisioned all circumstances that might result in danger to the public. Such was the discovery of an uncapped abandoned well under Mr. Griffice’s home emitting methane gas that likely caused the tragic event of March 8, 2024.”

An Inside Climate News investigation revealed last year that Alabama residents have complained about the risks of methane explosions above coal mines for decades. 

“Currently we are living in fear of gas escaping from the underground mines and causing an explosion or burns,” one Alabamian wrote in a letter to regulators in September 1999. “There have been people killed who were above longwall mines.”

Another coalfield resident, Bobby Snow, put it more colorfully at the time.

“You can go down there and play or go down there and hunt, but don’t smoke or you’ll be standing in your smutty underwear wondering what the heck happened because the methane gas is coming up out the ground,” he told regulators 25 years ago. 

Longwall mining involves a large machine shearing swaths of coal hundreds of feet underground, releasing methane gas and leaving vast underground caverns that collapse once mining has moved on. That collapse, experts say, causes subsidence, or the sinking of the land above, a process that often damages surface structures like homes or businesses. 

Fissures in the land above the mined area can also provide a path of escape for the methane released during mining. It’s that escaping methane that Griffice’s family claims was the cause of the explosion that left their loved one dead.

Oak Grove Mine has been labelled by experts as one of the “gassiest” in the country. 

Specific risks posed by water wells above coal mines have also been on the regulatory radar for years. Federal regulators published a technical manual on how to deal with gassy wells in 2011, well over a decade before Love wrote that such risks were largely unforeseeable. Federal regulators pointed Alabama regulators to the manual, which had already been highlighted by Inside Climate News, in their communications late last year. 

December’s so-called “ten-day notice” was the first time in the state’s history that the Alabama Surface Mining Commission, charged with regulating the surface impacts of underground coal mining in the state, had been put on formal notice by its federal counterpart to force a coal mine’s compliance with the law or face further regulatory action.

In the ten-day notice, officials with the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement wrote that investigators had determined that Oak Grove Mine in western Jefferson County may be out of legal compliance for failing to adequately monitor potentially explosive methane emissions from the mine.

The notice by U.S. regulators was issued following a federal inspection of the mine and visits to residences across Oak Grove that came days after an Inside Climate News investigation into federal inaction on the issue.

The state’s response, reported here for the first time, is the first clear move by state regulators to address concerns over the risks of longwall mining since the March 2024 explosion. 

State regulators had previously failed to act to address such risks and citizen concerns. It took regulators months to hold a public meeting for citizens to voice those worries, and officials said they had little power to intervene. So far, Alabama legislators have made no move toward proposing legislation to address the issues in Oak Grove, or risks from longwall mining more generally.

The inspection report underlying the ten-day notice shows that federal investigators followed in the footsteps of Inside Climate News’ reporting on Oak Grove, visiting the Griffice home and the mine as well as the homes of Lisa Lindsay, Clara Riley and Randy Myrick, all residents profiled as part of the newsroom’s Undermined series.

Love’s January response to state regulators also confirmed that state regulators believe they have the power to shut down operations at Oak Grove Mine if they believe there to be an imminent risk to citizens. 

“It should be noted that on September 18, 2024, ASMC met with the management of Crimson Oak Grove Resources (Crimson),” she wrote. “During this meeting, ASMC stressed to Crimson that ASMC had the full authority to shut down the mine unless actions were taken to address the severity of the situation. The management team expressed their understanding and their desire to voluntarily go above and beyond SMCRA required rules and regulations.”

Love wrote that because of the risks involved, “all Alabama underground mine operators should be required to evaluate and strengthen processes for identifying and locating both active and abandoned water wells and implement active methane monitoring processes to further protect public health and safety.”

Federal and state regulators will then “conduct oversight to validate mine operator compliance with revised procedures,” she wrote, which will be implemented through revisions to subsidence plans required for all Alabama underground mine operators.

Oak Grove Mine has had a checkered safety history below ground. The mine ended 2024 with a record 870 safety citations and orders, according to the Mine Safety and Health Administration, totalling more than $1 million dollars in penalties, So far, nearly $790,000 of those penalties have gone unpaid. 

Love and basketball are taking center stage early in March Madness — in a way that would make Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps, stars of the 2000 film titled “Love & Basketball,” proud.

The love story of Alabama State Hornets guard Amarr Knox and Southern Jaguars guard DaKiyah Sanders began before March. On Feb. 6, Knox proposed to Sanders and they later announced the engagement on social media on Feb. 14.

The newly engaged couple spent the following month breaking barriers and etching their names into the history books with their performances at the NCAA men’s and women’s tournaments, respectively.

On Tuesday, Knox made the game-winning shot that lifted his team over the St. Francis Red Flash. He led Alabama State with 16 points in the 70-68 First Four victory.

The win marked the historically Black university’s first win in an NCAA tournament. Alabama State also became the tenth HBCU to win an NCAA tournament game and the seventh to pick up its first-ever tournament win since 2000, according to ESPN Research.

The following day, Sanders dished four assists and grabbed three rebounds in Southern’s 68-56 First Four win over the UC San Diego Tritons. The win marked the Jaguars’ first in the women’s NCAA tournament and first from a Southwestern Athletic Conference team in the big dance.

The couple met at Alabama State, where Sanders spent four seasons, before transferring to Southern for the 2024-25 season. Knox enrolled in 2022, sharing two years together.

Southern will match up with the top-seeded UCLA Bruins in the first round of the women’s tournament on Friday (10 p.m. ET ESPN). Sanders, a Birmingham, Alabama native, averages 4.4 points, 3.1 rebounds and 3.4 assists for Southern in the 2024-25 season.

Knox averaged 14.4 points for Alabama State. The Hornets’ season came to an end in the round of 64 against the top-seeded Auburn Tigers, 83-63.