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.
U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Haleyville) says Alabama is on the cusp of delivering a sixth Republican congressional seat, and with it, potentially the U.S. House majority itself.
“Getting one seat in November, this November, we don’t have to wait two years, could decide the majority for the Republicans,” Aderholt said today on “The Rightside” in partnership with Yellowhammer News, hosted by Allison Sinclair and Amie Beth Shaver.
“So that’s very appealing,” he added.
Aderholt predicted a return to the congressional map drawn and approved by the Alabama Legislature in 2023, before the federal courts stepped in and forced a redraw.
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If the U.S. Supreme Court lifts the injunction barring Alabama from altering its congressional map before 2030, the state would go back to the one approved by the Legislature and signed into law by the governor that year.
The 2023 map essentially creates six Republican districts and one Democratic district.
The Alabama Legislature passed both chambers’ redistricting bills Wednesday as the special session continues in Montgomery.
Aderholt referenced the “Livingston map,” the Legislature’s 2023-approved plan in namesake of State Sen. Steve Livingston (R-Scottsboro), arguing it was consistent with the Supreme Court’s recent direction that race cannot be the predominant factor in drawing district lines.
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“It would not put a second minority district, per se, but it would give opportunities for everybody in the state of Alabama to have equal opportunity to be elected to Congress, whether they’re black or whether white,” Aderholt said.
Some have called for state lawmakers to a map that would make all seven districts Republican-leaning, but Aderholt explained the issues with going down that route.
“There are some proposals out there to try to do a what is called a true 7-0 map where there’s no chance that a Democrat could be elected in any of the congressional districts…and there is some down there that are afraid that if you do away with that one, in addition to doing away with the new district that was drawn where Shomari Figures is that, that would be an overreach, and the court would put everything on hold, and we couldn’t do we couldn’t even get the additional seat until the court order, a different court order came through, and who knows when that would be.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on X @Yaffee
As the Alabama Legislature convened Monday for another special session, it marks the tenth time in the past decade that a governor has called lawmakers back to Montgomery outside the regular calendar.
Here’s a look at what brought them back each time.
2015: General Fund budget crisis
Governor Robert Bentley called lawmakers back after vetoing a cut-heavy General Fund budget that would have slashed roughly $200 million from state agencies. The rainy day borrowing from the Alabama Trust Fund that had propped up state government since 2012 had finally run dry. Bentley proposed a $310 million tax increase package. Legislative leaders recessed for three weeks and then resurrected the same budget he had already vetoed. Nothing passed.
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2015: Budget, take two
With the fiscal year starting October 1 and still no budget, Bentley called a second session. Lawmakers hammered out a patchwork compromise that averted a government shutdown but fell well short of the structural revenue fix Bentley had pushed for.
2016 — Medicaid funding and the lottery
Medicaid faced an $85 million shortfall. Bentley called lawmakers back and pushed a lottery bill that would have sent $100 million annually to Medicaid. The Senate passed it 21-12, but the House couldn’t get there. The fallback was a $640 million bond issue backed by Alabama’s BP Deepwater Horizon settlement, which kept Medicaid funded for two more fiscal years. The lottery died again.
2019 — Rebuild Alabama gas tax
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Ivey called a special session the day after her State of the State address to pass a 10-cent gas tax increase, the state’s first in 27 years. The three-bill package passed quickly.
2021 — First Special Session: Prison construction
Facing a federal DOJ lawsuit over unconstitutional prison conditions, Ivey called lawmakers back to authorize a $1.3 billion prison construction plan funded by state bonds, General Fund dollars, and $400 million in federal COVID relief money.
2021 — Second Special Session: Post-census redistricting
Delayed census data pushed redistricting into a special session. Lawmakers drew new congressional, state legislative, and school board maps in five days. The congressional map was immediately challenged as a Voting Rights Act violation, launching the Allen v. Milligan litigation that continues today.
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2022 — ARPA funds, first tranche
Ivey called lawmakers back to appropriate $772 million in remaining federal relief funds. The session produced over $276 million for broadband expansion, plus major investments in water and sewer infrastructure.
2023 — First Special Session: ARPA funds, second tranche
Another $1.06 billion in federal funds needed appropriation. Ivey used the same tactic as 2019: State of the State one day, special session the next. The money went to healthcare, broadband, infrastructure, and repaying the final $60 million owed to the Alabama Trust Fund from the Bentley-era borrowing.
2023 — Second Special Session: Court-ordered redistricting
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After the Supreme Court ruled in Allen v. Milligan that Alabama’s map likely violated the Voting Rights Act, the Legislature drew new maps that a federal court rejected as non-compliant. A court-appointed special master drew the maps used in the 2024 elections instead.
2026 — Redistricting, again
Monday’s session follows the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais. The Legislature will prepare contingency maps and special primary election procedures in case the court lifts the injunction blocking Alabama from redrawing its districts before 2030.
The pattern
Three distinct forces have driven Alabama’s special sessions over the past decade. The Bentley-era sessions were born from a structural budget collapse the Legislature couldn’t or wouldn’t fix through new revenue.
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The Ivey-era spending sessions used tightly controlled special sessions to move high-dollar legislation quickly with minimal floor debate.
And the redistricting sessions have been driven by court deadlines and Supreme Court decisions, with the Legislature’s maps rejected or overridden in two or three attempts.
Sawyer Knowles is a capitol reporter for Yellowhammer News. You may contact him at [email protected].
State Rep. Rhett Marques (R-Enterprise) opened a six-point lead over former U.S. Rep. Jerry Carl (R-Mobile) in the Alabama congressional race for the First District, and Carl’s comeback bid shows no signs of catching up.
The PI Polling survey, conducted May 2 through May 4 for Alabama Daily News, puts Marques at 27% and Carl at 21% among likely Republican primary voters. Joshua McKee trailed at 4%.
The trend line tells the sharper story. Marques climbed steadily across three consecutive PI Polling surveys, rising from 19% in early April to 22% later that month to 27% now. Carl posted 23%, 20%, and 21% across the same stretch. Marques is building. Carl is treading water.
Forty-five percent of likely Republican primary voters remain undecided, meaning the Alabama congressional race will be decided by which campaign breaks through in the final two weeks.
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Carl pulls 46% in Mobile County, home turf for the former county commissioner and congressman.
That advantage vanishes everywhere else. Marques leads in Baldwin County, holds a 32-to-6 edge in the Dothan media market, and dominates the district’s rural and exurban counties at 38% to Carl’s 5%.
The Alabama congressional race outside Mobile belongs to Marques.
Marques also leads Carl across every ideological group the survey tracked: very conservative voters at 29% to 21%, somewhat conservative voters at 26% to 21%, and moderates at 26% to 19%.
His favorability climbed from 24% in early April to 32% now, with just 9% unfavorable. Fifty-nine percent of voters still have no opinion of him, leaving significant room to grow as the primary closes.
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Alabama requires a majority to win a party primary outright. If no candidate clears 50% on May 19, the top two finishers will advance to a runoff on June 16. With nearly half the electorate still uncommitted, a runoff remains a very real possibility.
The survey was conducted May 2 through May 4, 2026 by PI Polling for Alabama Daily News. It included 531 likely Republican primary election voters and was weighted to match likely 2026 turnout demographics. The margin of error is ±4.3% at a 95% level of confidence.
Sawyer Knowles is a capitol reporter for Yellowhammer News. You may contact him at [email protected].
