Alabama basketball wonât have an encore performance in this yearâs trip to the Music City. The No. 3 seeded Crimson Tide was bounced out of the SEC tournament Friday night with a 102-88 loss to No. 6 seed Florida.
Following the game, Alabama head coach Nate Oats spoke about the loss and how his team will look to rebound for next weekâs NCAA tournament.
Hereâs a full transcript of everything Oats said during his postgame press conference.
âObviously not the outcome we were expecting or hoping. Got to give Florida a lot of credit. They’ve played us really well two straight games. I thought we had a good start to the game, things were rolling. Kind of took the timeout, they got readjusted.
âI didn’t feel we had a killer’s mentality to kind of just put ’em away early. We could have I thought maybe buried them when we got them down 8-zip. They kind of took the timeout, they started making a comeback.
âWe kind of chart every four minutes, get the media timeouts. We were up .56 and .88 on defense the first two. The next six straight, they were over a 1.4. 1.5, 1.6, 1.57…
âOur defense just kind of, I don’t know if it was coming too easy, the offense. For whatever reason, our defense has been our Achilles’ heel all year. We had a good start today, couldn’t maintain it for 40 minutes.
âSo disappointing, but we’ll be in the NCAA tournament, so we had a good enough regular season. We had quality wins. We’ve got a pretty good tournament résumé. We’ll see where they send us.
âThese guys are going to have to decide how bad they want to win in the NCAA tournament, how much we want to continue to play defense for 40 minutes. If we play defense for 40 minutes, we can play with anybody in the country. If we decide to take 24 minutes off from the defensive end, it’s going to be hard to beat anybody in the NCAA tournament.”
âI think it’s a big part of it. I talked to them after the game. Like, adversity happens. You miss a shot, ref misses a call, teammate misses you being open. I mean, you can see it. Intensity is not there on defense. Bad defensive possession, they score. We don’t come back pushing the ball with pace on offense. Makes the next offensive possession harder. Just a snowball effect.
âIt goes both ways. You play really hard on defense, you get stops, transition, we score in really long transition. You don’t play hard on defense, you can’t get out in transition as much, we’re not as good. Snowball went on and on and on for, shoot, at least 24 minutes today.
âWe got to be better. I got to do a better job. I probably should have called a timeout in the middle of the six minutes at the end of the half. Maybe should have used an extra timeout on top of the one I actually used. We got to do a better job trying to keep guys in the game that are focused on defense. Coaches, we got to do a better job.â
âThat’s a good question.
âI thought we had a good, positive attitude coming into this tournament. I didn’t think we played particularly well against Arkansas. That would have been our third loss in a way. We came back, got the win. We’ve lost three of the last four. We haven’t been healthy. We just got Wrightsell back, Griffen back from the previous Florida game. Felt like we finally got our group together. We got a little healthier.
âI mean, it’s hard to change at any point during the year. Shoot, if we don’t change, we’re not going to be playing too many more games at this point. They’re going to have to decide how much more basketball they want to play together. This will be the last time this group gets to play together.
âI felt bad for Aaron [Estrada]. I felt he played pretty hard most of the day. Next time we lose, he’s done, his career’s over. He’s been a great teammate. He’s helped the program a lot. I would hope these guys would want to try to play a little harder for him at least.â
âYeah, I mean, [Griffenâs] first game back. He hasn’t even practiced. We haven’t had a live practice that he’s been able to participate in. You’re hoping he can step back in and play like he was playing before he went out, but it’s probably unrealistic. Hopefully the next time he plays… He’ll be in practice with us all week getting some live reps. He’s been pretty good for us all year.
âWrightsell has been banged up over the last month. He’s a lot better, to be honest with you. Having a healthy Wrightsell and Griffen obviously make a difference.
âStill go back to I just think the biggest problems is our defensive intensity. Those two have been some of our better perimeter defenders. Maybe if they can get a little healthier.
âObviously you’re judged a lot on what you do in March in college basketball. We need to try to make a deep NCAA tournament run. I think Rylan’s legs looked pretty good, his individual skill workouts. Probably needed some game reps. Hopefully, he plays a lot better this next weekend in the NCAA tournament.”
âYeah, I mean, we’re just going to have to come in and figure out who we’re going to play Sunday night. Put together a game plan. Tell them exactly how we’re going to have to do it. Talk about doing it every possession for 40 minutes regardless of what happens on offense.
âThey’re teenagers, young adults, young men. I’ve had issues like this with guys in the past. Seems like as a collective whole, this has been a little bit bigger issue with this group, not being able to forget the play before, move on to the next play.
âI told them again tonight, it really doesn’t matter whether you missed three wide-open shots, your teammate missed you, the ref blew a call. It doesn’t matter. Your effort on defense shouldn’t be affected by what happens on offense.We’ve got too many guys where I feel like it does.
âWe’re going to have to try to get the attitudes back right, just change. We want to win, this is what we’re going to have to focus on defense every possession. We’re going to try to reiterate it for the next week. Whether we play Thursday or Friday of next week, we have to be ready to go right out of the gate.â
âI think we got a lot of guys that are too worried about what happens on the offensive end. In practice you can run a defensive drill, and it’s defense, defense, boom, boom, boom. They’re working on their defense. You get in the game, and they’re worried about what their offensive number is, whatever it is. The offense goes bad. Whether it’s their fault or not. Shoot, sometimes they’re upset with the ref or the teammate or they miss a shot, haven’t got a shot in a few possessions. Defensive intensity lags.
âThe teams that can make deep tournament runs are teams that have a defensive mindset. Look at our group last year. Two out of the last three years we’ve been top three in defense, two out of the last three before this year. Those are teams that also won the SEC tournament. The two that were ranked right around a hundred, this one and two years ago, we got beat in the first round.
âThese guys are going to have to decide that other group got beat in the first game in the NCAA tournament. We have a week to decide if they can guard for 40 minutes or not. If we can, we can make a deep run in the NCAA tournament.
âIt’s not for lack of quality defensive personnel, in my opinion. Obviously we’re missing some guys here and there. We’ve got guys that are more than capable of being better than solid defenders. We don’t have to be a top three defense in the country when we have a top three offense in the country. If our defense was top 30, we’d be easily a top five, top 10 team in the country right now.
âYou’ve seen it from various teams this year where they figure it out and play hard on defense. We got to try to figure it out over the next week.â
âI’ve had a really good five years here working with Craig, Dr. Bell, the board. Just everybody around the school. I love it here. We’ve turned the program around. A little disappointed tonight obviously. We’d like to be playing tomorrow, playing for the SEC tournament championship.
âMore than the NCAA tournament, the 13 years before we got here, they’d only played in two. This will be four straight for us. We’ve got the program headed in the right direction, we’ve got the commitment from the administration that they’re going to continue to support us in a way that I feel like we can compete to be a top 10, top 25 team year in, year out.
âI appreciate their support in keeping me here. Take my name out of some of the other job openings that are there. Probably not great timing with this loss tonight, to be honest with you.â
âWe’re definitely lacking it. It’s not there enough. (Indiscernible) let offensive possessions affect his defensive energy. Some of those guys had a little bit more competitive character on the defensive end, which is why we were top three in the country in defense.
âSome of these guys have it at times. It’s just not consistently there enough from the group as a whole. I love this group of kids. They’re a bunch of really good kids.
âWe got to compete harder on the defense end for 40 minutes, and we’re not right now. We didn’t tonight. It’s been a problem with us through large parts of this year, to be honest with you.â
MONTGOMERY, Ala.—For some incumbents, politics have turned sour in sweet home Alabama. In the May 26 primary election for two seats on the Public Service Commission, the state’s utility regulator, voters rejected one incumbent and sent another to a runoff.
The electoral shakeup comes as Alabamians are increasingly concerned about economic issues, including utility prices. Polling released earlier this year showed that 80 percent of Alabamians cite economic concerns as the top issue state leaders should address.
Now, Alabama politicians have gotten their first sense of voters’ attitudes this election cycle, and the message for incumbents charged with regulating utilities is one of frustration.
Commissioner Jeremy Oden, a Republican who has served on the body since 2012, lost his bid for re-election to Matt Gentry, who currently serves as sheriff of Cullman County, 75 percent to 25 percent.
Gentry will go on to face Democrat James O. Gordon in the November general election.
Another Republican incumbent on the PSC, Chris Beeker, also failed to garner the most votes from primary voters. Jim Zeigler, a perennial candidate who served on the body from 1975 to 1979, earned the most votes with 45 percent to Beeker’s 25. Because no candidate earned the majority of votes, Beeker will face Zeigler in a primary runoff election on June 16. The winner will face Democrat Sheila McNeil in November.
Electricity prices, in particular, have become a hot button issue across the country ahead of this year’s elections, including in Alabama, where power-hungry data center projects have begun to spring up across the state. In neighboring Georgia, utility cost increases and data center development became a major discussion in its own Public Service Commission elections, races that led to major Republican-to-Democrat flips and garnered headlines nationwide.
Fear of a similar outcome in deep red Alabama has left some politicians nervous. During this year’s legislative session, lawmakers were forced to pull a bill that would have ended Public Service Commission elections altogether after significant public outcry.
In its place, the majority GOP legislature passed a major restructuring of the regulatory body that inflates its membership from three to seven members and consolidates significant regulatory power in a newly created secretary of energy to be appointed by the governor. The new law makes it more difficult to initiate a formal rate case, effectively barring such a hearing before 2029 and subsequently requiring the approval of the secretary of energy or five of seven commission members to do so.
Alabamians have good reason for concern over energy prices. An Inside Climate News analysis showed that Alabama Power customers paid the highest average residential bills among the 100 largest investor-owned utilities in the United States. Experts have pointed to the “regulatory capture” of bodies like the Public Service Commission as one reason for those high rates.
All of the successful candidates in this year’s PSC primaries have cited high utility bills as a reason for reform.
In the race for the Place 1 seat, Gentry’s 50-point primary victory over Oden came in the wake of Gentry’s pledge to call for the first formal public rate hearing overseeing Alabama Power’s electricity price increases since 1982. James Gordon, his Democratic opponent, has gone further, calling for regular formal rate hearings, an immediate 25 percent reduction in bills and consideration of a cap on the company’s annual profits.
In the bid for Place 2, Zeigler and Beeker will battle it out in the lead-up to their June runoff. Beeker is relatively new to the commission, having been appointed to the body in 2024 to serve the remaining term of his father, also Chris, a three-term incumbent, who resigned citing health concerns.
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Zeigler’s campaign has focused on pairing opposition to both large data center projects needed to power AI and solar farms for renewable electricity to harness local political passions, though his campaign’s website landing page features an AI-generated image as its background.
“They can ruin your community, consume water and drive your electric bills up. No one in Montgomery is overseeing this,” Zeigler said of data centers in a campaign video.
Beeker has taken a more traditional Alabama politics approach, nationalizing the issues and attacking what he labels “woke” left policies he claims without evidence are driving energy prices up.
Appearing in an ad holding his rifle on a farm, Beeker said he’ll fight for Alabama.
“As your public service commissioner, I’m again standing with President Trump against woke liberal environmentalists who are trying to kill Alabama jobs,” Beeker said.
As commissioner, Beeker has not yet called for a formal rate hearing on Alabama Power’s electricity prices.
McNeil, the Democrat in the race, did not face a primary challenger and has now begun her general election campaign in earnest. Her message? Power bills must come down.
“This is one of the most important positions on the ballot because it affects 1.5 million Alabamians,” McNeil said of the PSC races at a candidate forum earlier this month. “Utility rates are too high. They are some of the highest in the country. Something has got to be done because what has been going on for the last 20 years got us to where we are today.”
Perhaps you noticed: This story, like all the news we publish, is free to read. That’s because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We do not charge a subscription fee, lock our news behind a paywall, or clutter our website with ads. We make our news on climate and the environment freely available to you and anyone who wants it.
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Two of us launched ICN in 2007. Six years later we earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, and now we run the oldest and largest dedicated climate newsroom in the nation. We tell the story in all its complexity. We hold polluters accountable. We expose environmental injustice. We debunk misinformation. We scrutinize solutions and inspire action.
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Lee Hedgepeth
Lee Hedgepeth is Inside Climate News’ Alabama reporter. Raised in Grand Bay, Alabama, a small town on the Gulf Coast, Lee holds master’s degrees in community journalism and political development from the University of Alabama and Tulane University. Lee is the founder of Tread, a newsletter of Southern journalism, and has also worked for news outlets across Alabama, including CBS 42, Alabama Political Reporter and the Anniston Star. His reporting has focused on issues impacting members of marginalized groups, including homelessness, poverty, and the death penalty. His award-winning journalism has appeared in publications across the country and has been cited by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, among others.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WSFA) – Alabama has expanded income eligibility for the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program, known as WIC, meaning more families may qualify.
WIC serves people who are pregnant, postpartum or breastfeeding, as well as parents or guardians of children younger than 5. Applications are handled through local county health departments and WIC clinics.
WIC provides food benefits for each eligible family member, including a monthly cash-value benefit that can be used for fruits and vegetables. Each child receives $26 a month, pregnant and postpartum participants receive $48 a month, and breastfeeding participants receive $52 a month. Other approved foods include whole-grain bread and cereal, milk, cheese, yogurt, eggs, peanut butter, beans, canned fish and infant foods.
Participants can also receive nutrition education, breastfeeding support and health care referrals. Alabama’s WIC program issues benefits electronically.
| Family Size | Annual Income | Weekly Income |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | $40,034 | $770 |
| 3 | $50,542 | $972 |
| 4 | $61,050 | $1,175 |
| 5 | $71,558 | $1,377 |
| 6 | $82,066 | $1,579 |
Under the 2026 federal poverty guidelines, WIC is open to households with incomes up to 185% of the federal poverty level. Participants also must meet nutrition-risk requirements. Families already receiving Medicaid, SNAP or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families generally meet the income guidelines for WIC, though others may qualify as well.
Each unborn infant counts as one in the family size. For additional household sizes, see the Alabama Department of Public Health’s WIC information page.
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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.
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