Let’s have a double-episode on Thursday on “The Joe Gaither Show on BamaCentral” as we look to catch up in a busy week. Our first episode of the day centers around our time in Birmingham as SEC Media Days was held on Tuesday to get everyone excited for the new season.

Alabama basketball was selected as the preseason favorite to win the SEC. It’s just another instance of expectations being placed on the Crimson Tide as they also received the highest preseason ranking in program history. The Crimson Tide is capable of winning the national championship and head coach Nate Oats hasn’t shied away from those expectations, but instead embraced them at every turn. What happens is Alabama isn’t able to win the conference or make a deep run in March?

We discuss Mark Sears being selected as the SEC’s Preseason Player of the Year and highlight the other great players in the conference that he was chosen over. How good can Sears be in his third season in Tuscaloosa? How will lessons from last year’s final six weeks impact the upcoming season as it pertains to Sears and his leadership?

The program then transitions into actual basketball as we enjoyed a scrimmage on Friday night in Coleman Coliseum. Who stood out during the short period of open play?

The show can be seen on the BamaCentral YouTube channel. Keep up with each show on YouTube,Facebook and Twitter. Shows can also be heard on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon.

The forecast for Alabama for the next week is a dry one.

According to NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center, no rain is expected in the state over the next seven days.

That could lead to the worsening of drought conditions.

This week’s report from the U.S. Drought Monitor, released Thursday, shows that drought conditions were heading in the wrong direction over the past week in some categories:

The report showed that conditions worsened slightly in two drought categories:

* Level 1 or moderate drought increased from 28.35 percent of the state last week to 36.24 percent this week.

* Level 2 or severe drought increased from 0.29 percent last week to 1.59 percent this week.

Level 0 drought (also referred to as abnormally dry conditions) remained the same at 87.50 percent of the state.

No part of the state is in Level 3 or 4 drought, the two most serious categories.

October is typically Alabama’s driest month, and this one may be no exception.

No rain is expected in the next week, and below-average rainfall will also be possible through the end of the month.

Here’s the eight- to 14-day precipitation outlook, which covers Oct. 24-30. It shows that much of south and east Alabama may have a 33-40 percent probability of below-average precipitation. The areas in gray could be near average for rain:

The experimental Week 3 and 4 outlook suggests the probabilities of below-average rainfall could increase to 55-60 percent for much of the state:

The next U.S. Drought Monitor report will be released next Thursday, Oct. 24.

Alabama is preparing to execute a man who admitted to killing five people with an ax and gun during a 2016 drug-fueled rampage and dropped his appeals, so his execution go forward.

Derrick Dearman, 36, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Thursday at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in south Alabama.

Dearman pleaded guilty to killing five people during a 2016 rampage that began when he broke into the home where his estranged girlfriend had taken refuge. Dearman this spring dropped his appeals so his execution could go forward. “I am guilty,” he wrote in an April letter to a judge, adding that “it’s not fair to the victims or their families to keep prolonging the justice that they so rightly deserve.”

“I am willingly giving all that I can possibly give to try and repay a small portion of my debt to society for all the terrible things I’ve done,” Dearman said in an audio recording sent this week to The Associated Press. “From this point forward, I hope that the focus will not be on me, but rather on the healing of all the people that I have hurt.”

Shannon Melissa Randall, 35; Joseph Adam Turner, 26; Robert Lee Brown, 26; Justin Kaleb Reed, 23; and Chelsea Marie Reed, 22, were killed on Aug. 20, 2016 at the home near Citronelle, about 33 miles (53km) north of Mobile. All of the victims were related.

One of the victims, Chelsea Reed, who was married to Justin Reed, was pregnant when she was killed. They had planned to name the boy Aiden Kaleb, according her obituary. Turner, who was married to Randall, shared the home with the Reeds. Brown, who was Randall’s brother, was also staying there on the night of the murders.

The day before the killing, Joseph Turner, the brother of Dearman’s girlfriend, brought her to their home after Dearman became abusive toward her, according to a judge’s sentencing order.

Dearman had shown up at the home multiple times that night asking to see his girlfriend and was told he could not stay there. Sometime after 3 a.m. he returned to the home when all the victims were asleep, according to a judge’s sentencing order. He worked his way through the house, attacking the victims with an ax taken from the yard and then with a gun found in the home, prosecutors said. He forced his girlfriend, who survived, to get in the car with him and drive to Mississippi.

Dearman surrendered to authorities at the request of his father, according to a judge’s 2018 sentencing order.

As he was escorted to jail, Dearman blamed the rampage on drugs, telling reporters that he was high on methamphetamine when he went into the home and the “drugs were making me think things that weren’t really there happening.”

Dearman initially pleaded not guilty but changed his plea to guilty after firing his attorneys. Because it was a capital murder case, Alabama law required a jury to hear the evidence and determine if the state had proven the case. The jury found Dearman guilty and unanimously recommended a death sentence.

Dearman has been on death row since 2018.

This is Alabama’s fifth scheduled execution of the year. Two of the state’s executions were carried out by nitrogen has. The other two were carried out by lethal injection, which remains the state’s primary execution method.