Alabama
Justin Lebron Exits as Alabama Drops Game it ‘Didn’t Deserve To Win’ to Kentucky
Alabama was in good shape entering the bottom of the fourth against Kentucky, leading 4-1 and appearing primed for its first SEC win of the season, despite star shortstop Justin Lebron exiting the game with an ankle injury. The Crimson Tide would then go on to implode, giving up seven runs over two error-laden defensive frames while proving unable to bring runners home in an 8-7 loss that gives the Wildcats the series win.
“We didn’t deserve to win,” head coach Rob Vaughn said. “That’s about as sloppy a defensive game as I’ve been a part of… at the end of the day, it’s basic stuff we do all the time that we just didn’t execute at a high level.”
Alabama started fast, as Lebron reached on a fielder’s choice, stole second and third, and came home on a Brady Neal sacrifice fly to get the Crimson Tide on the board with two outs in the top of the first. Jason Torres drew a walk, John Lemm doubled and Luke Vaughn was hit by a pitch to load the bases, giving Alabama an early chance to blow the game open. Captain Will Plattner, making his first weekend start in three weeks, was plunked as well to load the bases.
Starter Ben Cleaver was pulled after just 0.2 innings, as Kentucky would go on to deploy six arms in the win, none of which would go more than 3.0 innings. The Wildcats would get out of the opening frame with no further damage, and the score remained the same through the end of the second thanks to two perfect innings from Zane Adams.
In the top of that second inning, Lebron rolled his ankle on second base after a flyout. He played the bottom of the inning at short before exiting in what appeared to be a precautionary measure.
“We’ll know a lot more tomorrow,” Vaughn said. “They taped them up. Routine fly ball and he just stepped on second base… just couldn’t go back out there (for the third). So we’ll see where we’re at tomorrow, but we probably won’t know anything on him until close to the game time tomorrow.”
Justin Osterhouse, who was out of the lineup today, replaced Lebron, going 0-for-2 with a walk. Alabama added a run in the third off a John Lemm home run and the fourth off an error, but the offense dried up after that. After just one run through four innings, the Wildcat bats picked up, scoring four off Adams in the fifth to take a 5-4 lead.
Kentucky added three more in the seventh as Hudson Brown took Matthew Heiberger deep to right field. Two of the runs were credited to Evan Steckmesser. Alabama had its chances throughout the game, notably with the bases loaded with two outs in the sixth, but was unable to cut into the deficit at all until the top of the ninth.
Luke Vaughn drove in a run with a single through the right side, prompting a pitching change in the final frame, before nine-hole batter Brennan Holt brought in two with a single up the middle. All of a sudden, Alabama was a swing away as Bryce Fowler came up to bat with the tying run on second and the go-ahead run at first. Fowler struck out swinging to strand both of them.
“You look up, and you’ve got 12 guys left on base,” Vaughn said. “We had three or four situations where we could’ve gotten a big two-out hit and didn’t get it. When you go on the road, you’ve got to go take it from somebody, and we just weren’t able to do that.”
Alabama has struggled with many of the same things all season, as sloppy play, stranded runners and an inconsistent bullpen continue to plague the team. With a gauntlet of an SEC schedule on tap this year, an opening series sweep against a good, but far from elite, Kentucky team could prove detrimental for the direction of the season.
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Melissa Fortenberry saw a problem and sought a solution, a solution Alabama football is buying into.
Fortenberry invented HeatSense, a fitness tracker that measures athletes’ individual core body temperature with the “goal of proactively managing heat strain.” In August, Alabama will be Heat Sense’s first customer.
“They are all in,” Fortenberry told The Tuscaloosa News. “They very much want their player health to be at the top of the list.”
With a background in technology, Fortenberry came up with the idea of HeatSense as a fan, watching her three kids play youth sports in from the stands. She became sick, feeling dizzy and nauseous and coming to the conclusion that the pads and turf were hotter for athletes on the field.
Fortenberry conducted her own research and saw more reactive solutions than proactive.
“You can see heat strain forming in people and proactively cool them or keep pushing, where today, you’re flying blind,” Fortenberry said.
Jeff Allen, senior associate athletic director for health and performance and Alabama football’s head athletic trainer, has already been on the forefront of innovation for player safety, introducing the injury tent in 2015 to allow training staff and medical personnel to examine athletes privately on the sideline during games.
When Carson Tinker, a former Alabama and NFL long snapper and Fortenberry’s neighbor, heard about her idea, Allen was the first person Tinker thought of.
“Jeff was like, ‘Man, this sounds super interesting. Keep me in the loop with this,’” Tinker said. “It’s something he felt he knew that he could use. That was over a year ago now. … Now it’s all kind of come together. It’s crazy how it all kind of works out.”
“Once we got Jeff’s attention, he was really intrigued,” Fortenberry said, adding Allen “wants to be on the forefront of making the game better.”
Members of the HeatSense team attended an Alabama practice during its fourth-quarter program in March and put sensors on 10 players.
“I think the feedback they heard from players was validated in what we saw,” Fortenberry said.
Tinker views this not only as a safety tool, but an advantage overall to find a player’s peak body temperature.
“You want to be able to use the heat to your advantage. You want to be able to play your best in all conditions, but nobody knows until it’s too late and you got to get through in the cold tub because you overheated.”
Alabama is just the start for HeatSense, which has the goal of reaching three to five Division I programs this summer.
According to Weather Spark, the average temperature in Tuscaloosa eclipses 90 degrees during Alabama’s fall camp. Fortenberry now has a way for the Crimson Tide to respond.
“People, I think, are afraid of the heat, but you don’t know you can do something about it,” she said. “Now you can.”
Colin Gay covers Alabama football for The Tuscaloosa News, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at cgay@gannett.com or follow him @_ColinGay on X, formerly known as Twitter or Instagram @colingaytnews.
A new survey of likely Republican runoff voters in Alabama suggests the state’s four statewide runoff contests remain at different stages heading into the June 16 election, with one race showing a clear leader, another appearing highly competitive, and a third remaining largely unsettled.
According to The Alabama Poll, which surveyed 600 likely Republican runoff voters on May 28, U.S. Senate candidate Jared Hudson leads Congressman Barry Moore 48.7% to 39.2%, while 12.1% of voters remain undecided. The poll indicates Hudson has built support among voters whose preferred candidates did not advance to the runoff.
In the race for lieutenant governor, Secretary of State Wes Allen holds a narrow overall lead over Alabama Republican Party Chairman John Wahl, 41.9% to 38.4%. However, the survey found Wahl performing slightly better among voters who report they are certain to vote and among the most frequent Republican primary voters, highlighting the potential importance of turnout in the contest. Nearly one in five voters, 19.6%, remain undecided.
The attorney general runoff shows the largest margin among the four statewide races surveyed. Katherine Robertson leads Jay Mitchell 49.1% to 31.2%, with 19.7% of respondents undecided. Poll analysts noted that Mitchell’s path to closing the gap would likely depend on winning support from voters who view him favorably but have not yet committed to a candidate.
Meanwhile, the Republican runoff for commissioner of agriculture remains the most unsettled race in the survey. Corey Hill leads Christina Woerner McInnis 33.1% to 27.3%, but nearly 40% of likely runoff voters remain undecided, leaving substantial room for movement before Election Day.
Beyond the candidate matchups, the poll found Republican voters generally optimistic about the direction of Alabama, with 63.6% saying the state is headed in the right direction. At the same time, economic concerns continue to dominate voter priorities. Nearly 79% of respondents identified an economic issue as the most important problem facing the state, with grocery prices and utility costs cited most frequently.
The survey also found President Donald Trump’s approval rating among likely Republican runoff voters at 83.2%. Researchers reported that endorsements from both Trump and U.S. Senator Katie Britt carried similar persuasive weight among respondents.
The Alabama Poll surveyed 600 likely Republican primary runoff voters using a combination of live telephone interviews and text-message surveys. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points and was conducted May 28 among voters who said they are likely to participate in the June 16 Republican runoff election.
Former Alabama offensive lineman Barrett Jones and linebacker DeMeco Ryans are under consideration for the College Football Hall of Fame’s 2027 class, the National Football Foundation announced on Monday.
Dennis Franchione, who was Alabama’s head coach during the 2001 and 2002 seasons, is also under consideration. Franchione was a two-time NAIA National Coach of the Year before moving into Division I, where he led New Mexico to its first bowl in 36 years and TCU to its first postseason win since 1957. He took over a 3-8 Alabama team and led the Tide to a 10-win season in 2002, later guiding Texas A&M to consecutive victories over Texas (2006-07) and a berth in the 2005 Cotton Bowl.
Jones is a two-time First Team All-American (2011-unanimous, 2012-consensus) and winner of the 2012 NFF Campbell, 2012 Rimington, 2011 Outland and 2011 Wuerffel trophies. He Led Alabama to three national titles and two SEC crowns.
The three-time First Team All-SEC selection is arguably the most decorated offensive lineman in school history, winning national honors at three different positions (center, tackle, guard). The 2012 Alabama captain played through Lisfranc injury with at least two torn ligaments suffered in SEC Championship Game. He also played in the national title game before having surgery that kept him out of the NFL combine.
DeMeco Ryans, who is currently the head coach of the Houston Texans, could be considered the best player of the Mike Shula years as he was the program’s top draft pick between 1998-08 (between first-round selections Dwayne Rudd and Andre Smith).
During his senior season, the linebacker led Alabama with 76 tackles including 9.5 for a loss, en route to being named a first-team All-American, the SEC Defensive Player of the Year, and Lott Trophy winner as college football’s best impact defensive player.
These three are among 80 players and nine coaches from the FBS, along with 99 players and 39 coaches from the NCAA divisional and NAIA ranks.
Alabama currently has 28 representatives in the College Football Hall of Fame, with the most recent inductees being Heisman Trophy-winning running back Mark Ingram in the 2026 class and seven-time national champion (six at Alabama) head coach Nick Saban in the 2025 class. Ingram was the first Crimson Tide player under Saban to be inducted.
Alabama in the College Football Hall of Fame
(Member, Year Inducted)
- Don Hutson, 1951
- Frank Thomas, 1951
- Fred Sington, 1955
- Wallace Wade, 1955
- Don Whitmire (transferred to Navy after two years), 1956
- Johnny Mack Brown, 1957
- Pooley Hubert, 1964
- Millard “Dixie” Howell, 1970
- John Cain, 1973
- Lee Roy Jordan, 1983
- Riley Smith, 1985
- Paul “Bear” Bryant, 1986
- Vaughn Mancha, 1990
- Harry Gilmer, 1993
- Ozzie Newsome, 1994
- John Hannah, 1999
- Johnny Musso, 2000
- Billy Neighbors, 2003
- Cornelius Bennett, 2005
- Woodrow Lowe, 2009
- Gene Stallings, 2010
- Marty Lyons, 2011
- Derrick Thomas, 2014
- E.J. Junior, 2020
- Sylvester Croom, 2022
- Antonio Langham, 2024
- Nick Saban, 2025
- Mark Ingram, 2026
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