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.
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.
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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.
Read More
In the Wake of Georgia’s Blue Wave, Alabama Changed Its Utility Regulation Elections. This Black Democrat Is Suing.
By Lee Hedgepeth
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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.
A protestor holds a sign in front of Alabama Power’s Birmingham headquarters after the passage of the PSC restructuring law. Credit: Lee Hedgepeth/Inside Climate News
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.
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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.
A power substation outside Birmingham, Ala. Credit: Lee Hedgepeth/Inside Climate News
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.”
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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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Thank you,
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Lee Hedgepeth
Reporter, Alabama
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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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“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.
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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.
