Alabama basketball coach Nate Oats understands whatâs on the line inside Coleman Coliseum on Saturday. No. 14 Alabama is in position to win its second straight SEC regular season title and a victory over No. 4 Tennessee on Saturday night will separate the Crimson Tide from the Volunteers at the top of conference standings.
Oats also understands the strength of Alabamaâs opponent.
âI’m sure anything short of a Final Four run they’d be disappointed with at the end of the year,â Oats said âSo it’s a really good team we got coming in here with the SEC league title on the line.â
Oats also knows that Alabama will need a much better performance against the Volunteers than it showed during Tennesseeâs 91-71 drubbing of the Tide on Jan. 21. Alabama has grown since that game, putting in solid road performances against Georgia, LSU and Ole Miss to keep pace with the Volunteers. Its offense has stayed humming, having now scored at least 100 points in nine contests, which is the most by an SEC team since 1995-96.
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Alabama is also playing the rematch in front of its home fans with the basketball version of ESPNâs College GameDay coming to Tuscaloosa for the first time ever. The Crimson Tide are nursing a 16-game SEC home winning streak and are 13-1 inside Coleman Coliseum this season.
Home court advantage alone wonât be enough against a deep and talented Volunteers side that game Alabama all sorts of problems in Knoxville, Tennessee. Oats made it clear what needed to change to reverse the result from earlier this season. If Alabama wants to pull off an upset â which Oats emphasized there would be no court-storm for â the Crimson Tide will need to be steady in possession after racking up turnovers in the first game and be strong in its matchups against Tennessee’s talented roster.
With first place in the SEC on the line, hereâs everything you need to know about the game
How to watchÂ
Who: No. 14 Alabama (20-8, 11-4) vs. Tennessee (19-8, 6-8)
When: 7 p.m. CT, Saturday, March, 2
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Where: Coleman Coliseum, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Watch: (Play-By-Play: Dan Shulman, Analyst: Jay Bilas, Sideline Reporter: Jess Sims)
Listen: (Play-By-Play: Chris Stewart, Analyst: Bryan Passink, Sideline: Roger Hoover, Engineer: Tom Stipe)
When Alabama and Tennesee met in Knoxville, Alabama turned the ball over 22 times, which Tennessee turned into 23 points as it cruised to a 20-point win. The Crimson Tide struggled in possession away from home, and its lackluster defense failed to get stops in response.
When speaking to the media Friday, Oats said Alabamaâs defensive and turnover issues created a cyclical pattern that gave the Tide no chance against the Volunteers. Alabamaâs turnovers gave Tennesee easy points against a weak transition defense. Those scores allowed Tennessee to set its own defense and prevented Alabama from attacking in transition, which is crucial for the Tide in establishing its high-powered offense.
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âIf we can get stops and get out in transition and we’re going against them when their defense isnât set, we’re a lot better off,â Oats said. âSo it’s a combination of a lot, but the turnovers and the defensive, focus, intensity, physicality wasn’t there the first time.â
Alabamaâs defense has been questionable at best since its first meeting with the Volunteers, but the Crimson Tide showed great improvement at taking care of the ball in its last game against Ole Miss. Alabama turned it over just eight times against the Rebels. Mark Sears played 40 minutes, while Aaron Estrada logged 38 and the pair had just a single turnover between them.
While the defense is far from perfect, Alabama has played itself back into games with short bursts of strong defending. Against Ole Miss, it was the middle portion of the game where Alabama ended the first half strong and forced five Rebels turnovers in the opening five minutes of the second half.
The Crimson Tide forced seven Volunteers turnovers during the matchup in January. If Alabamaâs defense has enough effort in it to create double-digit Tennessee turnovers on its home floor, the defense-to-offense cycle that Oats alluded to could flip in favor of the home side.
Height and youth
Just as he did before the matchup in Knoxville, Oats made it clear that Alabama canât solely focus on Tennessee star Dalton Knecht.
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âIt’s not like this is a one-man band,â Oats said⦠âThey just took a very good team, one of the best teams in the league (and) added the leading scorer in the league to it in Knecht, and now they’ve got a team that’s primed to get a one or two seed (in the NCAA Tournament).â
Knecht scored 25 points when the two sides faced off in January. Though heâs been nearly impossible to stop since his scoring against the Tide came on a relatively inefficient 8-for-20 shooting from the field and a 1-for-6 clip from beyond the 3-point line.
The Volunteers hurt Alabama with its physicality, scoring 38 points in the paint. Alabama managed to outdo Tennesee in that category with 42, but that was largely due to the Tideâs 4-for-21 mark from 3-point range, which forced it to rely on paint touches to get points.
Since that game, Alabama has shown it can turn to paint scoring. It outscored Florida 56-40 in the lane on a night where it shot 25% from 3. It outscored Ole Miss 40-28, relying on paint touches early before getting hot from deep.
Those trends of strong paint performances will have to be carried over. Grant Nelson will need to avenge his forgettable outing against the Volunteers, where he fouled out with just three points.
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Alabama will also need another good performance from Nick Pringle, who was suspended for the first game against Tennessee. Friday, Oats gave credit to Pringle for raising his game. He has been in double figures in the last three games, including 10 points and five rebounds against Ole Miss.
Pringle, Nelson and the rest of Alabamaâs frontcourt will need to carry that momentum against Tennesseeâs Jonas Aidoo. The junior was a matchup nightmare in Knoxville, going for 19 points, five rebounds and four blocks.
âOur frontcourt guys just gotta be a little tougher,â Oats said. They got ducked in all night (against Tennessee) and Aidooâs big and he’s good but weâve got to make it a little harder, and our guards gotta do a little better job not letting the guards get so deep and making it easy to just drop the ball in like they did last time.â
To counter Aidoo, Oats said Alabama revisited how it defended talented bigs during nonconference play. Oats referenced the Tideâs games against Purdueâs Zach Edey, Creghtonâs Ryan Kalkbrenner and Arizonaâs Oumar Ballo. In the rematch with Aidoo, Oats said Alabama will look to execute traps from both the baseline and the top of the key.
Ahead of Alabamaâs biggest game of the season, Oats has also raised his expectations for the Crimson Tideâs freshmen.
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âSome of our younger kids have grown up a little more,â Oats said. âI told our freshmen âitâs March now. We don’t need you to be acting like freshmen. You need to look a lot more like sophomores. You played a whole season of basketball and gotten a lot of reps.ââ
No matter how much experience a player has, the Crimson Tide will need all the help it can get against a strong Volunteers side. While Alabamaâs frontcourt hones in on Aidoo, its backcourt will be focused on making life difficult for Knecht, as well as Tennessee guards Zakai Zeigler and Santiago Vescovi. The pairâs experience gives the Volunteers stability in the bacourt. Vescovi is in his fifth season with Tennessee, while Zeigler averages 5.9 assists per game which leads the conference.
In October, millions of people took part in “No Kings” protests against President Donald Trump. In one Alabama town, police arrested a woman in a lewd costume and threatened her with jail time—a clear violation of her First Amendment rights.
Unfortunately, the case is still ongoing, and this week, it’s set for trial.
“Officers were dispatched following complaints regarding traffic hazards in the area,” the Fairhope Police Department posted on Facebook at the time. “Upon arrival, an officer observed an individual in a phallic costume near the Baldwin Square Shopping Center.”
Translation: He found a woman in an inflatable penis costume, holding a sign that said “No Dick-Tator.”
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“The officer approached the woman and requested that she remove the costume, which is deemed obscene in a public setting; however, she refused to comply,” the statement continued. It added that officers arrested the woman in question, identified as Jeana Renea Gamble, “an ASL interpreter who bought the penis suit at a nearby Spirit Halloween store,” Liliana Segura wrote at The Intercept. She was 61 years old at the time.
Body camera footage from the responding officer—identified in an incident report as Cpl. Andrew Babb—provides additional context. “I’m not gonna sit here and argue with you,” Babb says as he approaches Gamble. “If my kids had to come by and see this, how would you explain it to them?”
Babb’s tone is immediately confrontational, as he repeatedly demands to know “how you would explain to my children what you’re supposed to be.” When Gamble asks if “your children don’t understand what a pun is,” Babb calls for backup over his radio.
Gamble asks if she’s being detained, and when he doesn’t answer the question, she turns to walk away. Babb then grabs her costume, throws her to the ground, and flips her over while he and other officers handcuff her.
Bystanders criticize his actions, to which Babb retorts, “I told her to take it off.” In fact, he didn’t, at least not according to the footage; it’s possible he told her to remove the costume while first walking up, before he activated the audio on his recording, but otherwise, the entire interaction—from initial approach to throwing Gamble to the ground—took less than 60 seconds.
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He also tells the crowd, “This is a family town”—whatever that means.
Babb took a phone call on the way to the jail, as shown on the bodycam footage. He explains he arrested someone “dressed like a friggin’ weiner,” and he says he told her, “being dressed like that is not going to be tolerated….You’re setting an example that doesn’t need to be set.”
Officers booked Gamble on misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest—quite a stretch, given the video evidence.
In February, prosecutors added even more charges for disturbing the peace and giving a false name to law enforcement. When officers asked Gamble for her name, she replied, “Aunt Tifa”—an apparent pun on antifa, the shorthand used by antifascist protesters.
After being delayed twice before, Gamble’s trial is set to begin on April 15.
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It’s hard not to see this as an abuse of power. Specifically, Babb took offense at Gamble’s costume, and his stated reasoning makes it clear he feels entitled to punish people for offending him or his children. But it’s not against the law to force somebody, even a police officer, to have uncomfortable conversations with his kids.
As Segura noted at The Intercept, the costume Gamble wore that so incensed Babb is sold at Halloween stores. Should he have the right to shut down Spirit Halloween, or arrest its employees, because his children might see it?
Babb would not be the first to let his tender sensibilities override his charge to enforce the law.
In 2019, an officer in Lake City, Florida, arrested Dillon Shane Webb for a sticker on his truck that declared, in bold letters, “I eat ass.” The officer said the sticker violated Florida’s obscenity law, which UCLA School of Law professor Eugene Volokh concluded at the time was “unconstitutionally overbroad and thus invalid on its face.” Indeed, just days later, prosecutors dropped the charges, concluding Webb had a valid First Amendment defense.
Unfortunately, prosecutors in Alabama have not reached the same conclusion. Hopefully, a jury will similarly conclude that Gamble did nothing wrong, but either way, it won’t undo the damage that has already been done, in which officers roughed up a senior citizen because they found her costume objectionable.
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“It’s a travesty of justice that this case is even going to trial,” Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), tells Reason. “It rests on nothing more than a citizen criticizing the president using a costume anyone could buy at a Spirit Halloween store. The arresting officer didn’t hide the fact that he handcuffed Gamble because he was offended by her costume. But giving offense is not a crime. Gamble’s political expression lies squarely within the First Amendment’s protection. Fairhope officials should be correcting this constitutional violation, not doubling down on it.”
Tennessee Volunteers forward Alyssa Latham (33) fouls Alabama Crimson Tide guard Jessica Timmons (23)Thursday, March 5, 2026, during the SEC Women’s Basketball Tournament second round game at Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, South Carolina. Alabama Crimson Tide won 76-64.
(Alex Martin/Greenville News, Alex Martin/Greenville News / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
Former Alabama guard Jalil Bethea has officially committed to Pittsburgh, per Rivals’ Joe Tipton.
Bethea struggled to make a consistent impact throughout his one and only season at Alabama. The former Miami transfer averaged 3.9 points, 1.7 rebounds and 0.5 assists this past season, as Bethea could potentially play a much larger role throughout his time at Pitt next year. Bethea averaged just eight minutes per game this season as well, as the former Crimson Tide guard will now turn his full attention towards a fresh start with the Panthers.
Bethea was ranked as the No. 3 shooting guard and the No. 7 overall player from the class of 2024, per the 247Sports Composite rankings. He was listed as the No. 1 overall player out of Pennsylvania as well, as a return to his home state could undoubtedly be exactly what Bethea needs to turn his career around during the 2026-27 campaign.
Following the commitment of Bethea, Aiden Sherrell and Taylor Bol Bowen are the lone Alabama players in the portal who have yet to announce a transfer decision.
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