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FEBRUARY 17, 2020

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The Crimson White

Monday, February 17, 2020

Pope fills VPSL position 20 years after

graduating from UA By: Keely Brewer

In 1988 Myron Pope left Sweet Water, Alabama, a town with a current population of 241, to attend The University of Alabama. He recounted walking into an introductory chemistry course on his first day of classes as a freshman.

"There were 350 people in that class," Pope said. "Comparing that with my hometown felt like a huge culture shock."

The University's student body has doubled in size since his graduation, but he claims the culture

and the feeling he has when walking on campus is the same.

More than twenty years later, Pope has been selected as the new vice president for student life (VPSL) to fill a position left open after the resignation of David Grady on July 26. Kathleen Cramer will maintain the role of interim VPSL until Pope's arrival on May 4.

"As an alumnus of the University, Pope brings both a wealth of knowledge and leadership in higher education and a very special personal perspective to our administrative team," said University of Alabama President Stuart R. Bell in a UA News release on Feb. 14. "He will be a tremendous asset to our students and the campus community."

Pope earned his Bachelor of Arts in history followed by a Master of Arts and Doctor of Education in higher education administration from the Capstone.

During his time as a graduate student at the University, Pope was the primary liaison to the division of student affairs and coordinated all minority and multicultural programs. As a graduate assistant in the office of student life, he served as an advisor for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), African American Association (AAA), and Pan­Greek Council.

Cramer, the current interim VPSL, was his supervisor in this role.

"[Cramer] was my first exposure to student life as a whole," Pope said. "Throughout my career, she has been a mentor, and she's been a good friend."

Pope also pointed to Ross Palmer, a member of the board of advisors in the college of education, along with other individuals in the department who he has maintained strong relationships with over the years.

While a member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity at the University, Pope explored the relationship between Greek life and the African American experience on campus as part of his coursework.

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The Crimson White

Monday,February17,2020

When Pope visited campus in January to deliver a presentation as one of five candidates vying for the VPSL position, he said that the University's expansion in size has created a more diverse community, entirely different from the one he knew as a student.

He was further involved on campus through his experience as a student-athlete. Pope was a member of the football team, following coach Homer Smith's encouragement to walk-on, winning two SEC championships and one national championship.

Harrison Adams, SGA president and one of two students included on the VPSL search committee, pointed to Pope's familiarity with the University experience as a student on its campus as a sign of his preparedness to take on the role.

"He was looking to students throughout all our conversations," Adams said in reference to his interactions with Pope during the search process. "He steered the conversations back to how it could impact students. He's someone who, throughout his career, has made sure students are at the forefront."

Adams said he feels confident SGA and the rest of the student body will have a great relationship with Pope.

As Pope's experience as a student at the University drew to a close, two faculty positions within his program became available. While staying in Tuscaloosa was an end goal, a mentor of his encouraged him to gain experience beyond campus first.

"Well that's what I did," Pope said. "What started off as two or three years ended up being twenty."

Pope has spent the last 16 years at the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO), most recently serving as the vice president of student affairs.

Challenges with respect to diversity, equity and inclusion were present during Pope's time as a student at UA,, and he recognized similar patterns upon arriving at UCO. He worked to combat the long-standing issues he observed through the implementation of a range of programs.

At UCO, Pope collaborated with the provost to create Project Persist, a program designed to improve retention for students who fell into categories traditionally indicative of lower retention rates. The first group of students to complete the program performed at a level ten percentage points higher than their peers.

UA's most recent available 2-year retention rates are 87.9% and 3-year retention rates are 79.9%.

Pope also led efforts to increase the diversity of UCO's student body through recruitment and retention efforts. Of UCO's current student population, 42% are considered ethnic minorities -compared to about 20% at the Capstone - while 46% are considered first-generation college students and 38% are Pell Grant recipients.

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The Crimson White

Monday, February 17, 2020

Overseeing the implementation of the Black Male Summit and Black Male Initiative programs to improve the success rates of this demographic on campus, developing a model of integrated health care that addressed counseling services and the student health center, and leading a systematic effort to support transfer students are all part of his efforts to address diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at UCO.

"Overall, intentionality is key in the work we do in student affairs," Pope said. "You have to be very intentional in terms of shaping the environment."

As a leader, Pope is a firm believer in assessing an environment before making any immediate, drastic decisions rather than bringing in a preconceived plan based on third-party information.

"Obviously there are going to be some low-hanging fruit," Pope said. "I will certainly try to expedite those situations, but overall ... I want to gain a sense of what's truly going on before I make any decisions."

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The Tuscaloosa News

Saturday, February 15, 2020

UA names new student life vice president By: Ken Roberts

A member of the University of Alabama's 1992 national football championship team has been chosen as UA's new vice president of student life. Myron L. Pope, a Sweet Water native who has earned three academic degrees from UA, will assume the post on May 4. "I am honored and humbled to return to the Capstone, and I look forward to playing a role in promoting the success of all of our students," Pope said in a news release.

Pope comes to UA from Oklahoma, where he served as chief of strategic engagement for the Oklahoma Department of Human Services. His resume also features 14 years in vice presidential roles in higher education, including a stint as student affairs and enrollment management at the University of Central Oklahoma.

"As an alumnus of the university, Dr. Pope brings both a wealth of knowledge and leadership in higher education and a very special personal perspective to our administrative team," said UA President Stuart R. Bell. "He will be a tremendous asset to our students and the campus community."

Pope played for coach Gene Stallings as a walk-on tight end/linebacker on the UA football team that beat Miami in the Sugar Bowl after the 1992 season. The win earned the Crimson Tide its first football national championship since the Paul W. "Bear" Bryant era. Pope earned a bachelor of arts in history at UA, along with a master of arts and a doctor of education in higher education administration.

He served as U A's director of recruitment programs/alternative certification from 1997 to 2000 and as a clinical assistant professor in the higher education administrative program at UA. At the University of Central Oklahoma, Pope helped develop plans to increase student success, retention rates and enrollment. He collaborated with the provost to create plans focused on diversity and inclusion in student life and the curriculum.

"I want to thank President Bell for this opportunity," Pope said, "and I look forward to working with him, the Division of Student Life and leadership to advance the mission of this institution that I love dearly. Roll Tide."

The Division of Student Life provides support for students through a variety of programs including health and recreation, career counseling resources, the student center, student media, residential communities and other resources.

UA's vice president of student life position opened up in July 2019, when David Grady announced his resignation. Grady had led the Division of Student Life since June 2015. Grady joined UA after serving as associate vice president and dean of students at the University of Iowa. Kathleen Cramer, a retired UA administrator, served as interim vice president for student life after Grady's resignation.

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The Crimson White

Monday,February17,2020

Cemented in history: Hudson immortalzed

with jersey retirement

By: Ben Stansell

In the weeks leading up to his departure, Wendell Hudson heard his mother, Mildred, hum and sing as she went about the house cooking or cleaning. The sound of his mother making little melodies wasn't unfamiliar to Hudson. It was something she had done often. But she had never sung or hummed quite so much, and to Wendell, that was one of the small signs that she wasn't comfortable with what was about to happen.

Weeks later, it did happen: Hudson walked onto the University of Alabama campus as the first African American scholarship athlete in the school's history. Prior to Hudson, the only African American athletes on campus were walk-ons. By signing with the University's basketball team, Hudson shattered barriers and opened the gates for other African American athletes.

More than 50 years later, Hudson once again walked on campus to do something that no other student athlete had done before - have his jersey retired. During halftime of Alabama's 88-82 victory over LSU on Saturday afternoon, a black curtain fell down from the rafters of Coleman Coliseum, unveiling a white No. 20 jersey with "Hudson" written in crimson on the back. It was a historic moment for one of Alabama's most important historical figures. Along with retiring his jersey, Alabama will honor Hudson by having all spring sports teams don a black "WH" patch on their jerseys.

When he decided to come to Alabama as a lanky, 6-foot-6 teenager, Hudson wasn't thinking about his place in history. He was just looking for a place to play basketball. Legendary Alabama coach C.M. Newton gave him a chance to do that at The University of Alabama.

"It's an unbelievable feeling to think that an 18-year-old person that would be like them right now did not really have a clue what he was really doing when he came here from a historical standpoint, but [I] kind of felt like it would be an opportunity to play and do some things," Hudson said to media members before the LSU game.

Even after Hudson arrived on campus, he didn't feel like the trailblazing figure that many, including documentarian Keith Dunnavant, have called him. Dunnavant detailed Hudson's historical significance in his 2013 film "Three Days at Foster."

"Wendell is a pioneering figure - not only in sports at The University of Alabama, but in the culture of the state of Alabama," Dunnavant said. "The step that he took when he was signed in 1969, it's hard to imagine how difficult it was from the vantage point of the 21st century. He was the only black face in Bryant Hall for a year."

Hudson may have been one of the few African American athletes on campus, but he never felt out of place at the University. Unlike most stories of integration, Hudson's tale doesn't include

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The Crimson White

Monday, February 17, 2020

terrible acts of violence or overt racism. There was an ugly incident during an away game at Ole Miss in which insults were hurled from angry fans, but Hudson said that he wasn't mistreated on Alabama's campus.

"My story is not the necessarily typical story of integrating the athletic department and being the first black athlete, because I had fun," Hudson said. "It was enjoyable. It was fun. It was a good story."

Hudson's teammates, who were all white at the time he signed, embraced him and helped make his transition to the Capstone as smooth as possible, according to Wimp Sanderson, an assistant coach on Newton's staff at the time Hudson was recruited.

"One of the keys to recruiting players is your players," Sanderson said. "Players recruit players ... When [Hudson] came in to visit, all the players that we had were Caucasian at that time, and he felt comfortable around them."

Soon Hudson wasn't the only African American player on Alabama's roster. By his senior season, he was one of several black players on the team, joined by all-time great Alabama players like Leon Douglas and Charles Cleveland. African Americans were finally awarded scholarships on other sports teams as well, including the football team. In 1970, Wilbur Jackson became the first black scholarship football player when he was given an offer from Paul "Bear" Bryant.

Half a century has passed since Hudson opened the door, but today's Crimson Tide athletes are still thankful for what he did.

"[Hudson] paved the way for guys like me," sophomore point guard Kira Lewis Jr. said. "Without him, maybe I'm probably not here, maybe I am. More than likely I'm not here, so with him doing what he did, that's a big accomplishment. Hats off to him. He was a great player. People are going to look up to him for what he did."

Hudson's lasting influence is one of the primary reasons that athletic director Greg Byrne decided to make his jersey the first to be retired in the school's history. Alabama has seen countless spectacular athletes, from Pro Football Hall ofFamer Bart Starr to seven-time NBA champion Robert Horry, but none have been immortalized in the way that Hudson was on Saturday. That's not an indictment on the accomplishment of other Crimson Tide greats; it's simply a testament to what Hudson achieved.

When praised for being a trailblazer, Hudson is likely to brush it off with a joke. But history will continue to show the impact he had. And if anyone happens to forget, they simply have to look toward the rafters in Coleman Coliseum, where the No. 20 hangs - the first, and only, of its kind.

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The Tuscaloosa News

Monday, February 17, 2020

Wendell Hudson, UA's first black

scholarship athlete, has jersey retired

By: Ken Roberts

Wendell Hudson, the first black scholarship athlete at the University of Alabama, made a little more history Saturday.

During a ceremony at halftime of the Alabama-LSD baskeball game at Coleman Coliseum, Hudson became the first athlete in the history of Crimson Tide athletics to have his jersey number retired.

In accordance with Hudson's wishes, future Tide basketball players will still be able to wear the number 20, but his jersey will remain displayed in the coliseum's rafters, along with banners signifying conference championships and post-season appearances.

In addition to the jersey retirement, a men's basketball scholarship has been endowed by a donor in Hudson's honor and the uniforms ofUA student-athletes will feature a "WH" patch for the remainder of the winter and spring sport seasons.

Hudson is one of the most decorated student-athletes in Crimson Tide men's basketball history.

He was recruited by the late C.M. Newton after a stellar prep career at Parker High School in Birmingham. He become a member of the freshman team at Alabama during the 1969-70 season, then joined the varsity ranks for the next three years.

During his UA career, Hudson scored 1,768 points and grabbed 1,197 rebounds in the 93 games he played for an average of 19.0 points and 12.9 rebounds.

In 1973, Hudson was named a first team All-American after averaging 20.7 points and 12.1 rebounds as a senior. That same season, he became Alabama's first Southeastern Conference Player of the Year, leading the league in scoring. Hudson helped the Tide secure a second-place finish in the SEC and make its first postseason appearance in program history, advancing to the semifinals of the NIT.

Hudson was selected in the second round of the 1973 NBA draft by the Chicago Bulls and also played for the ABA's Memphis Tams. He was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame in 2001 and was honored as an SEC Legend in 2000.

Hudson was also recognized in 2000 by UA with its Paul W. Bryant Alumni-Athlete Award, which recognizes former athletes whose accomplishments since leaving UA are outstanding.

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The Tuscaloosa News

Sunday, February 16, 2020

Wen dell Hudson created a cultural shift in

Alabama athletics

By: Cecil Hurt

Wendell Hudson's story has been told a thousand times but it should be told 10,000 times more.

Hudson was the catalyst in the greatest cultural shift in Alabama athletics in the past 50 years,

opening the door for thousand of African-American athletes who have followed in his footsteps. The raising of his No. 20 jersey to the rafters of Coleman Coliseum was an appropriate honor acknowledging that milestone.

From the perspective of the present, the easiest narrative is that Hudson, recruited out of Birmingham's Parker High School by C.M. Newton (an unknown name in the coaching profession at that time), came to Tuscaloosa, had a great career, went out to success as a coach and administrator in college athletics and now has his appropriate place in history.

What's worth remembering, though, is that it wasn't such a simple path. We know the ending of the story, and it's a happy ending. But imagine the quiet courage that it took for Hudson to take that first step. Imagine what it took for his mother, Mildred, who had given birth to Wendell at age 16 in 1951 and watched the civil rights' struggles that racked Birmingham in the 1960s from Ground Zero, to let her son walk into what was, although the UA campus was just 60 miles from their home, a different world.

"The recruiting process then wasn't like it is now," Hudson said Saturday as he met the media before the halftime ceremony retiring his jersey.

"The families didn't get so involved," he said. "The recruiting was mostly done through the high school coach. My mom didn't really care ifl played basketball. She would just as soon I didn't play basketball, to be honest. She didn't really want me playing at Parker.

"But she wanted me to get a college education. She knew that."

Hudson could sense, though, that it was a tense time.

"As it got closer, my mother started to get a little nervous," he said. "In the weeks leading up to my leaving, she'd start cleaning the house or cooking and she'd start humming. Before long the humming would turn into singing. My mom loved to sing, so that was what she did whenever she was nervous. And I knew she was getting concerned about what was about to happen."

There was certainly community support for Hudson but he said it was largely because of the attitude of his high school coaches, Herman Edwards and the legendary William 'Cap' Brown.

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The Tuscaloosa News

Sunday,February16,2020

"I will always remember something C.M. said to me about that," Hudson said. "He told me that going to Parker was different than going to some of the schools in Birmingham, some of the predominantly black high schools.

"There was a feeling then from a lot of the coaches, and the people in the community, that black players should go to predominantly black colleges," Hudson said. "I understand that. But for Herman and for Cap, they wanted me to do what I thought was best.

"Cap told me that young men wanted to go where they thought they could play. That was natural.

"I looked out there," Hudson said, pointing to the court a few feet away, the court where he became a star.

"I looked out there and I thought I could play here."

He was right and Alabama - not just the basketball program but the entire school - is better because of it.

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Yellowhammer News

Monday, February 10, 2020

Planned UAB genomics project could make Birmingham the 'Silicon Valley of Biomedicine'

By: Sean Ross

The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) is already considered a national leader in precision medicine. Now, the university has proposed a project that could transform the Birmingham metropolitan area - and the entire state - for generations to come. The only catch? A final portion of funding from the State of Alabama is needed to make the project a reality.

First, some background.

Precision medicine focuses on individual patients to understand how their lifestyles, behavior, environment and genetics interact to affect their health. More importantly, precision medicine allows a systematic approach to integrate these key factors into the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease - all tailored to each and every individual patient.

Essentially, what UAB does in its world-class precision medicine practice - in partnership with top-notch Alabama entities like HudsonAlpha and Southern Research- is: (1) sequence a patient's whole genome or a specific tumor's genome; (2) then evaluate that sequence for a mutation(s); (3) use a massive and continually growing database to determine what effect any given mutation has on a patient; (4) cross-reference that mutation with all known compounds or drugs to (5) determine a treatment plan for the patient's condition. This process cures rare diseases on a regular basis. The story ofUAB's own Matt Might, considered a preeminent international leader in the field, epitomizes what precision medicine is all about.

Between May 2016 and April 2019, U AB' s precision medicine practice successfully developed research plans for 90 patients who were each previously believed to have an "undiscoverable" rare disease. Additional patients were also referred directly to an appropriate program or specialist through UAB's precision medicine process.

Moreover, UAB (through the Alabama Genomic Health Initiative) has repurposed approximately 10 existing medications for treating new disorders through the precision medicine practice. Examples are as simple as over-the-counter medications like Prevacid that UAB has discovered can be repurposed to treat a rare disease.

Impact- 'Once in a lifetime opportunity'

Simply put, the results have been staggering just in the first few years ofUAB's precision medicine focus.

However, this could be merely the beginning - a prelude to historic things to come. To really establish itself as the unequivocal global leader in genomic medicine and data sciences, UAB is committed to renovating and outfitting a state-of-the-art genomics facility.

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Yellowhammer News

Monday, February 10, 2020

The university has already secured a generous $10 million donation from Lee Styslinger III and the Altec-Styslinger Foundation. As such, UAB plans to name the building the "Altec-Styslinger Genomic Medicine and Data Research Building."

UAB has further secured $8 million in federal funding.

Yet, to get the facility done, another $50 million is needed. UAB is asking the state for this amount through an Alabama Public School and College Authority bond issue. Governor Kay Ivey chairs the authority.

The university also plans to pursue local government funding from both the City of Birmingham and Jefferson County.

The University of Alabama System, in which UAB is one of three campuses, argues that the payoff on the requested $50 million in funding for the state would be unquestionably worth it in multiple ways.

First, the most tangible way is the estimated economic benefits of the project.

With this facility in place, UAB would recruit 50 researchers and an additional 300 support staff, meaning 350 high to very high paying jobs would be created. The university would spend $75-100 million recruiting this top talent over the next seven or eight years. UAB projects those researchers, when collaborating with the intuition's existing Hugh Kaul Precision Medicine Institute and Alabama Genomic Health Initiative, can generate $75-85 million in new funding.

Ultimately, leaders within the UA System believe that Birmingham would be set to become the "Silicon Valley of Biomedicine" with the facility operational.

Each rare disease discovered or treatment plan formed could, in itself, become a large spin-off healthcare startup company based in the Magic City. This has already happened once in the first few years of the precision medicine practice in the form of a leukemia drug screening service that identifies the best possible treatment for each individual leukemia patient.

At a meeting of the UA System's board of trustees Friday at UAB, UA System Chancellor Finis St. John said that the UAB genomics facility could have a transformational impact on the Yellowhammer State similar to the likes of NASA and Redstone Arsenal, Mercedes-Benz and the Port of Mobile. He called the project a "once in a lifetime opportunity."

St. John said this is an opportunity "to improve the lives of our citizens in a way which may never occur again."

St. John's urgency was echoed by each trustee on Friday. Board members made passionate pleas for the state to support this unprecedented effort.

For the people, and the future, of Alabama

It should also be noted that it is not just officials associated with UAB or the UA System leading the charge on this project.

Every member of the Jefferson County state legislative delegation (who essentially never unanimously agree on anything) has signed a letter of support for the project, calling for the facility to be funded.

Senators wrote in their respective joint letter in 2019, stating, "The economic impact of this project cannot be overstated."

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Yellowhammer News

Monday,Februaryl0,2020

This letter was authored by Senate Rules Committee Chairman Jabo Waggoner (R-Vestavia) and signed by Senate Majority Leader Greg Reed (R-Jasper), State Sen. Rodger Smitherman (D­Birmingham), State Sen. Linda Coleman-Madison (D-Birmingham), State Sen. Shay Shelnutt (R-Trussville), State Sen. Dan Roberts (R-Mountain Brook) and State Sen. Priscilla Dunn (D­Bessemer). House members signed onto a separate letter echoing similar sentiments, and U.S. Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) backs the project and helped secure the federal funding component. Here is a snippet from the state senators ' letter:

The economic impact of this project cannot be overstated. Genomic medicine is literally the "next big thing" in medical research and treatment. This building will be a hub that helps attract outside investors and companies looking to relocate or expand, as well as an incubator for our own spin-off companies and licensing opportunities. These initiatives will lead to additional jobs and revenue for our state economy. Based on UAB's most recent Economic Impact Study, for every $1 the state of Alabama invests in UAB, there is a $25 return to the state's economy every year. We expect the return on this investment to be even greater.

Waggoner and Smitherman attended the board of trustees meeting on Friday to emphasize their staunch support for the project.

"The State can provide this support (the requested funding), and the State should provide this support because nothing that the State could do [ with the funding] would be more important to the future of this state," St. John said. "This is not a project to benefit UAB. It's not a project to even benefit the University of Alabama System. It is a project for the future of the citizens of Alabama."

Because, while the economic impact of the project could be unparalleled, there is a bigger factor in play, the greatest of them all: people's lives.

Ivey has said that "every life is a sacred gift from God."

UAB's genomics facility would undoubtedly save countless lives - and improve the quality of others. That return on investment is quite simply priceless.

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The Tuscaloosa News

Wednesday, Febuary 5, 2020

UA gets more than $20 million

By: Ken Roberts

The University of Alabama will receive more $20 million in donations from a Birmingham couple, with UA's business college and athletics department being the major beneficiaries.

Pending approval from the UA board of trustees, the total donations of $24 million from C.T. and Kelley Fitzpatrick will make the Fitzpatricks the largest cash donors in the university's history, according to a Tuesday new release from UA.

"The Fitzpatrick family continues to transform the UA college of business through remarkable investments in our students' lives and professional careers," said UA President Stuart R. Bell in a news release.

Part of the money will be used to establish the C.T. and Kelley Fitzpatrick Center for Value Investing at UA's Culverhouse College of Business and endow a director for the center.

The donations will also help the Culverhouse Investment Management Group, a student-led investment program, and $5 million will go to the Crimson Standard initiative, which funds improvements at U A's athletic facilities.

"We're thankful for their steadfast support and for their enduring legacy," Bell said. "Future business leaders are being shaped and empowered through C.T. and Kelley's philanthropy, and UA's business programs remain exemplars for success among public business schools."

C.T. Fitzpatrick, a UA alumnus, is the founder and CEO of Vulcan Value Partners. The firm wasa startup in 2007 and has grown into an internationally recognized investment management firmwith more than $15 billion in assets.

Kelley Fitzpatrick is a Tuscaloosa native and the daughter of Lewis Manderson, for whom UA's Manderson Graduate School of Business is named.

In 2015, the Fitzpatricks donated $3 million to UA for the creation of the Vulcan Value Partners Research Library and Trading Room as well as an endowed chair and professorship in the Culverhouse College of Business.

That gift made UA's business school the first in the nation to offer a value investing concentration at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Value investing is an investment strategy that involves picking stocks that appear to be trading for less than their intrinsic value.

"We are doing this because the university has been a good steward of our initial investment," C.T. Fitzpatrick said. "We think the additional investment can earn even higher returns andultimately help more students, as well as benefit the university, the state and the region. There isa lot of leverage in the gift."

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The Tuscaloosa News

Wednesday, Febuary 5, 2020

The Fitzpatricks' donations also include:

- $1.5 million to bolster marketing efforts to raise business school's profile

- $2 million to enhance professional development and career services for all Culverhouseundergraduate students

- A $2.5 million matching gift challenge that pushed the $30 million Hewson Hall campaign tocompletion in fall 2019.

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The Tuscaloosa News

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

UA names new director at transportation

institute

By: Ken Roberts

The University of Alabama has named Allen Parrish the new executive director at the Alabama Transportation Institute.

The University of Alabama has named a new executive director at the Alabama Transportation Institute.

Allen Parrish will assume duties on Feb. 17 at the institute, which helps advance modem transportation systems through planning, research and policies at the local, state and national level.

Parrish comes to UA from Mississippi State University, where he served as the associate vice

president for research and held a tenured appointment as professor of computer science and

engmeermg.

He was the founding director of the UA Center for Advanced Public Safety and worked at UA for 26 years. He left UA in 2016 to help start the cyber operations program at the U.S. Naval Academy.

"The University of Alabama is very excited that Dr. Parrish will be coming back to UA to lead a signature research institute," said Russell J. Mumper, vice president for research and economic development, in a news release. "I believe he has both the vision and proven experience as a collaborative leader to be highly successful in the role of executive director."

The news release says the institute has taken a lead role in researching and analyzing transportation challenges.

"Transportation is an important part of Alabama's economy, and continued modernization of all modalities of the transportation system is critical to future growth of the state and region," Parrish said. "UA can continue to be an important part of that ecosystem and is well-positioned to be a leader in this space."

Parrish is a 1990 graduate of Ohio State University.

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The Tuscaloosa News

Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Three suspects accused of stealing from

Tutwiler dorm rooms

By: Stephanie Taylor

A University of Alabama student and two other young men arrested Saturday are accused of stealing items from dorm rooms in Tutwiler Hall.

Five students contacted University of Alabama Police just before midnight Saturday and reported they saw the suspects enter rooms and steal items.

Nicholas Alan Owens, 20, Jordae Jungay Giango and Nolan Clay Renfroe, both 19, were all charged with second-degree burglary Saturday. All three are from Huntsville. Owens is the only one listed in UA's online student directory.

UA Police said the witnesses saw them "enter the rooms even though they were told they weren't invited or if they were unoccupied."

The five students said the suspects took keys and sunglasses, an Apple MacBook Pro and an Amazon Echo.

UAPD officers reviewed surveillance from the elevator and said Owens appeared to have a laptop concealed in his pants.

The officers spoke to Owens and later searched his room, where they recovered four Apple laptops and women's jewelry. He told officers that he and the other two suspects stole the jewelry from a location in Huntsville.

Owens was being held in the Tuscaloosa County Jail Tuesday with bond set at $120,000. Giango and Renfroe posted $120,000 bond and were transported to the Jefferson County Jail on third­degree theft charges. Both have been released on $5,000 bond on the Jefferson County cases. Details of the theft accusations weren't immediately available Tuesday.

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ALcom

Friday, February 14, 2020

Alabama school superintendent salaries

rising statewide

By: Trisha Powell Crain

The annual pay for Alabama school superintendents is on the rise, up 3% over last year, to an average of $144,417 according to the most recent pay data shared by the state department of education.

Alabaster City Schools' Dr. Wayne Vickers, who will be paid $235,707 in the 6,200-student district in Shelby County, is now the highest paid local superintendent in Alabama, replacing Dr. Craig Pouncey who left Jefferson County Schools to become president of Alabama Coastal Community College. Vickers was number three in the ranking last year. This latest pay data shows nearly all of Alabama's 138 superintendents will be paid a six-figure salary. The three that won't be are in small rural school districts.

The top end of the pay scale continues to grow, with 12 superintendents, up from eight last year, receiving more than $200,000.

While state funding is used to cover most teachers' salaries, superintendents' salaries are paid entirely with local tax money.

Generally speaking, the larger the student enrollment, the higher a superintendent's salary. But some smaller city and suburban districts also pay well.

There is a wide range of pay for superintendents statewide, with the lowest annual pay of $82,407 found in the 4 70-student Linden City Schools in south Alabama.

These salary figures do not include benefits or other contractual perks. Appointed superintendents typically negotiate both the salary and length of time of their contracts. Elected superintendents, whose term is dictated by the election, are sometimes given an opportunity to negotiate their salaries as well.

State Superintendent Eric Mackey was appointed by the state board of education in 2018 at an initial salary of $245,000 plus benefits. In accordance with his contract, Mackey received a 3% raise in May, making his current salary $252,350.

Averages continue to go up statewide, with city district averages continuing to be higher than those in the county. Alabama's 67 county superintendents will earn an average of $136,193, while superintendents in Alabama's 71 city school systems will earn an average of $154,290.

18

Al.com

Friday, February 14, 2020

Senate confirms Alabama Judge Andrew

Brasher for federal appeals court post

By: Howard Kloppowitz

A Montgomery federal court judge was elevated to a seat on a federal appeals court Tuesday after the U.S. Senate voted along party lines confirming Judge Andrew Brasher to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Brasher, who quickly rose up the ranks from Alabama's solicitor general to a federal judgeship, was confirmed in a 52-43 vote in the Senate. His nomination faced criticism from the Alabama NAACP and other groups, who contended that he would be unfair to African Americans after he supported gutting key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Brasher, who was nominated by President Trump for the post in November, was rated qualified by the American Bar Association.

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., applauded his colleagues for confirming Brasher.

"I believe Judge Brasher has served with impartiality, integrity, and purpose as a district judge, and I am confident he will continue to do so in this new capacity," the senator said in a statement. "I commend President Trump on his decision to nominate Judge Brasher to the Eleventh Circuit and know that his dedication to justice will contribute to the respected standards of our nation's judicial system."

Shelby's Democratic counterpart, Sen. Doug Jones, voted against confirming Brasher.

"Sen. Jones did not support his nomination to the district court and has not seen any new information that would change his position," a Jones spokeswoman told AL.com. "That being said, Judge Brasher currently serves on the bench and Senator Jones wishes him well going forward."

With Brasher' s confirmation to the 11th Circuit - which has jurisdiction over federal appeals cases in Alabama, Georgia and Florida-- , Trump has appointed half of the active judges on the circuit, according to Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law and an expert on federal judicial nominees.

"Judge Brasher's deep record of public service, combined with his impeccable legal credentials, more than qualify him for a seat on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals," Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement. "I am especially proud of his contributions as solicitor general for the state of Alabama, where he successfully argued cases before the Alabama Supreme Court, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court. Without a doubt, Judge Brasher will bring a renewed focus to upholding the law as he assumes his new position on the federal appeals court."

19

The Tuscaloosa News

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

Mayor criticizes Alabama law protecting

Confederate monument

By: Kim Chandler

MONTGOMERY-The mayor of Birmingham on Tuesday criticized an Alabama law forbidding the majority-black city from removing or altering a Confederate monument as well as a new proposal to fine cities $10,000-a-day for violations.

"We're saying protect something that is a slap in the face to black residents of this city, that are 74% of this city, the fourth blackest city in America. You want to have a statue that is commemorating relegating black people to being property and slaves," Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin told reporters.

Birmingham faces a $25,000 fine for erecting a wooden box obscuring the inscriptions on a 52-foot (16-meter) obelisk honoring Confederate veterans. The mayor made the comments in Birmingham on the same day lawmakers in Montgomery debated a proposal to increase the fines for violating the law.

Senators on Tuesday delayed a committee vote on legislation that would increase the penalties for violating the 2017 Alabama Memorial Preservation Act by raising fines to $10,000-a-day. But the bill would also give communities the opportunity to request a waiver from the prohibition on moving monuments that have been standing for more than 40 years.

"It's important to protect the heritage and history of this great state," Republican Sen. Gerald Allen, the bill's sponsor, said.

Allen, who sponsored the 2017 law, said there's a need to clarify what the fine is for violating the law. Allen said the bill allows a new opportunity for communities to seek a waiver from a state committee in order to move monuments more than 40 years old. Previously, there was a flat prohibition.

The Alabama Supreme Court upheld the 2017 state law and ordered a judge to fine Birmingham $25,000 for violating it. Birmingham has so far left up the panels around the monument which stands in a city park.

Woodfin said the proposal to increase the penalties feels targeted at Birmingham. Allen said the bill was not targeted at the city. He said the new waiver process would allow communities to express their concerns.

"How can you tell the complete story by taking away, whitewashing something, when really you can learn something from it," Allen said.

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The Tuscaloosa News

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

The 2017 Alabama Memorial Preservation Act currently prohibits relocating, removing, altering or renaming public buildings, streets and memorials that have been standing for more than 40 years.

The legislation doesn't specifically mention Confederate monuments, but it was enacted as some Southern states and cities began removing monuments and emblems of the Confederacy.

21

The Birmingham News

Thursday, February 13, 2020

Cheating investigation underway at Auburn's pharmacy school

By: Howard Koplowitz

An investigation into cheating among students at Auburn's Harrison School of Phannacy is underway, the university said Thursday.

"Once we became aware of an issue within a contained group of students, we acted in accordance with university and school policy and took immediate action to investigate and take all appropriate steps," Harrison School of Phannacy Dean Richard Hansen said in a statement to AL.com. "We hold academic integrity very seriously and are working diligently to address the situation as quickly as possible."

Auburn could not immediately be reached about how many phannacy students are suspected of cheating or what cheating methods were used.

Hansen reportedly sent out an email to faculty and staff at the school saying the school learned last week that there may be "widespread cheating" among first- through third-year phannacy school students, according to a copy of the email obtained by WRBL. The dean went on to say that he "offered leniency" to students who come forward and urged staff not to discuss the potential cheating with students.

"This is a very delicate issue so please do not address this with your student or mentees," Hansen wrote. "If you would like any more information you may contact me directly. If any students approach you about the investigation please refer them to me or [ Associate Dean for Academic Programs] Dr. [Paul] Jungnickel."

22

ALcom

Monday, February 10, 2020

University of Montevallo raises nearly $36.5

million in campaign

By: William Thornton

The University of Montevallo announced it has raised nearly $36.5 million over the past seven years in the largest campaign of the school's history.

The money, which came through the "It's About Family" campaign, was more than double the campaign's original goal, and will benefit scholarships, campus improvements, faculty development and other initiatives.

The university launched the campaign in 2012 with a goal of raising $20 million by 2019. It only took five years to reach that goal, so the UM Board of Trustees announced in February 2018 that they were extending the goal to $30 million.

In all, donations topped 18,000, from more than 10,000 donors, 6,000 making a donation for the first time.

The campaign made possible construction on the school's Center for the Arts and New Stephens College of Business building. It has also funded the completed 3D Art Complex, the new UM Track and Lacrosse Field and Softball Stadium, along with renovations to other athletic facilities, and renovations to Strong Hall. There will also be planned upgrades to Harman Hall.

Additionally, more than 115 new scholarships totaling more than $7 million have been started. The University's first-ever endowed academic chair has been established, along with two new endowed professorships.

The University's Traditions Fund also benefited from the campaign, ensuring that College Night, Founders' Day, the brick-lined campus and the Alabamian student newspaper will continue.

UM Board of Trustees Chairman Todd Strange said the campaign was a success because "people who love the University of Montevallo want to see it continue to thrive well into the future."

"We want to make sure this university commands attention from great students who want to come here to learn, grow and develop," Strange said.

23

The Birmingham News

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Jacksonville State University repeatedly

covered up sex crimes by student athletes,

staffers, amended lawsuit alleges

By: Tribune Media Services

A Georgia woman who says a basketball player raped her at Jacksonville State University in 2017 and that JSU officials protected the player from prosecution updated her lawsuit against the school last week, naming another school official and alleging earlier assaults by JSU athletes and staff.

The amended complaint, filed Feb. 1, gives further details of the aftermath of the alleged incident and accuses school officials of repeatedly covering up earlier crimes committed by staff and students.

The lawsuit was originally filed in October, claiming that inaction by the university led to her assault while she was a 17-year-old high school graduate enrolled in a JSU summer program and staying in a campus dorm, where she said the attack took place. The woman and her mother spoke to The Star for a July 2018 story, detailing claims of a cover-up by the university.

The complaint is filed in U.S. District Court in Birmingham, claiming violations of the woman's rights under Title IX, a law passed in 1972 that prohibits any educational entity accepting federal money from discriminating based on sex. In the 1990s, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that sexual assault is gender-based discrimination and should be considered under Title IX, and also that schools or universities have an obligation to respond to such allegations.

The woman's attorneys on Saturday filed a motion to amend the original complaint. District Judge Annemarie Carney Axon gave JSU until Feb. 11 to respond.

University attorney Sam Monk said Tuesday that JSU was aware of the amended complaint. JSU denied the allegations in its formal response to the original version of the complaints.

"We do not discuss ongoing litigation, in particular those that involve federally protected matters," Monk said.

Among the original complaints, the woman claimed that the university failed to investigate the basketball player, Marlon Hunter, before his admission into JSU.

Prior to enrolling at JSU, Hunter played basketball at Western Kentucky University under then­head coach Ray Harper, who now works in the same role at JSU. Hunter was removed from the team at Western Kentucky in 2016 along with two other players, and Harper resigned as coach soon after. Hunter transferred to JSU in 2017, after Harper became JSU's coach.

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24

The Birmingham News Tuesday, February 4, 2020

The complaint says that Hunter had a history of sexual misconduct at Western Kentucky, though JSU denied in a response filed in November that enough evidence exists to support the claim. Neither the original complaint or the amended version filed last week includes any details of the WKU allegation.

Investigation not immediate

The amended complaint filed by the woman' s attorneys says she met with multiple staff members and administrators at JSU's Title IX office, who did not contact her mother and did not ask her what happened the night of the incident. The office did not notify JSU police or begin its own investigation, the complaint says.

Because there was no investigation, the complaint says, physical evidence from the assault wasn' t collected.

More than a week later, Courtney Peppers, director of the summer program, casually mentioned the incident to a JSU police officer, the first time police were notified of the alleged attack, according to the complaint.

The amended complaint for the first time publicly links JSU vice president Ashok Roy to the case. The complaint says that when police told Roy, then JSU' s vice president of finance and administration, about the incident, he, Monk and other JSU employees pressured police to drop their investigation, as the situation had been "dealt with."

Only when police began the investigation, the complaint says, did the Title IX office start seeking evidence in the case, including student witness statements. The school held no hearing and pursued no "administrative or judicial proceedings," against Hunter that involved the woman or JSU police, the amended complaint says.

According to the woman and her mother, a grand jury had initially indicted Hunter, but because of JSU officials ' interference the indictment was withdrawn and the case was taken to a second grand jury, which did not indict him.

JSU police were informed that JSU administrators were considering firing the officers who continued to investigate the woman' s claims, per the amended complaint. The officer involved and the police chief, Shawn Giddy, were suspended for more than three months, and Giddy was fired at the end of that period.

Roy 's replacement in the role of vice president was announced in July 2018, the day before Giddy cleaned out his office at the Police Department. The university did not explain the reason for Roy' s departure.

According to the complaint, JSU' s stated reason for firing Giddy was his refusal to draft a policy that would allow JSU attorneys to review all warrant applications made by campus police. Giddy in 2018 filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, alleging his firing amounted to retaliation.

Attempts Tuesday afternoon to reach Giddy and Roy were unsuccessful.

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The Tuscaloosa News

Friday, February 7, 2020

Universities cancel study-abroad programs

amid virus fears

By: Michael Melia and Kantele Franko

As concerns about China's virus outbreak spread, universities are scrambling to assess the risks to their programs, and some are canceling study-abroad opportunities and prohibiting travel affecting hundreds of thousands of students.

From Europe to Australia and the United States, universities in countries that host Chinese students have reconsidered academic-related travel to and from China. In the U.S., the cancellations add to the tension between two governments whose relations were already sour.

The scare threatens to cause lasting damage to growing academic exchange programs that reached new heights over the last decade and a half, experts say.

The travel restrictions also complicate planning for conferences and campus events in the U.S. that scholars from China might attend.

"That door has been, if not slammed shut, certainly closed for the immediate future," said Michael Schoenfeld, Duke University's vice president for public affairs and government relations.

After U.S. officials recommended against nonessential trips to China, many universities limited travel there, including Duke, which also operates a campus in China in a partnership with Wuhan University, which is in the city at the center of the outbreak.

Duke Kunshan University closed its campus in Kunshan to nonessential personnel until Feb. 24. The school also helped students who had recently applied for Chinese residency get their passports from local officials so they could travel home and started developing online learning plans for them.

Two of the 12 confirmed U.S. cases are linked to college campuses. One diagnosis was confirmed at Arizona State University and another at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, which said the infected student had recently traveled to Wuhan.

The virus represents an unprecedented disruption for the academic ties between the U.S. and China, said Brad Farnsworth, vice president of global engagement at the American Council on Education.

He recalled the SARS crisis in 2002 and 2003, when the severe acute respiratory syndrome that originated in China killed nearly 800 people.

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The Tuscaloosa News

Friday, February 7, 2020

"The whole higher education relationship was not nearly as complex as it is now," Farnsworth said. "We have many, many more students going in both directions."

Many academic collaborations could be rescheduled if the crisis is resolved quickly, but the longer it lasts, the deeper the damage will be, he added.

China sends far more students to the United States than any other country - more than 369,000 in the last academic year, according to the Institute oflntemational Education. The U.S. typically sends more than 11,000 students to China annually. Lately, the relationship has been strained by visa difficulties, trade conflicts and U.S. concerns about security risks posed by visiting Chinese students.

"This doesn't help the current situation, which is very tense right now," Farnsworth said. "This is a low point in U.S.-China higher education relations, there's no question."

China's consul general in New York, Huang Ping, said Tuesday at a news conference that students who returned to the U.S. from Hubei province, which includes Wuhan, should report to health officials so they can be monitored. He urged the international community to work together to combat the illness, saying the "virus is the enemy, not the Chinese."

In Germany, the Berlin Free University and Berlin Institute of Technology each said they would not allow visits from China or approve trips to China until further notice. Paderborn University said it was reviewing any China travel plans made by students or doctoral candidates.

A spokesman for Silesian University in the Czech Republic said the school postponed exchange programs for 38 Chinese students. Several other schools issued similar cancellations, but Masaryk University in the Czech city of Brno said it was still ready to accept 24 students from China who are expected in two weeks.

Tens of thousands of Chinese students enrolled in Australian universities are stranded in their home country. Monash University has extended its summer break to give students and staff more time to return. Classes had been scheduled to begin on March 2.

Most Chinese students studying in the U.S. were already in place for classes when the virus emerged, but worries about the illness have led many schools to cancel plans to send Americans to China for an upcoming semester.

At the University of Arkansas, where China has been a popular study-abroad destination, especially for business students, about 60 students who had been planning to travel there beginning in May saw their programs canceled.

The university made the decision a week ago, before students had to make financial commitments, and it has been working to arrange opportunities in other parts of the world for the affected students, said Sarah Malloy, the university's director of study abroad and international exchange.

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27

The Tuscaloosa News

Friday, February 7, 2020

One Arkansas student, Lancaster Richmond, had been planning to visit Beijing and Shanghai to fulfill a requirement of her MBA program. Now the 24-year-old is planning to visit Chile this summer instead.

"I was obviously disappointed, but I also understand the university is doing whatever they can in our best interest," she said. "It made my parents a little more comfortable as well. They'd obviously been following the news."

Worries about the virus have altered some rhythms of campus life, including cancellations of Chinese New Year events at the University of Akron and the University of Arizona. But many universities say they are emphasizing precautions such as frequent hand-washing.

Andrew Thomas, chief clinical officer at Ohio State's Wexner Medical Center, said the university is monitoring the situation but trying not to be "over the top to the point that we're causing more concern and fear than is warranted in the community."

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which enrolls over 5,500 students from China, said some of its students from Wuhan who traveled home during winter break opted to self­quarantine or wear masks while going to class to protect others. Several institutions urged anybody returning from China to isolate themselves for two weeks as a precaution.

At Northeastern University, graduate student Lele Luan said that while some fellow Chinese students have taken to wearing masks around campus in Boston, he does not feel the need.

"They told me it's very safe here," he said. "So I don't do anything special to protect myself."

At the University of California, Berkeley, the Tang Center for health services tried last week to share tips on managing anxiety about the virus. But it faced backlash for a list suggesting that "normal reactions" might include xenophobia and "fears about interacting with those who might be from Asia."

Asian Americans quickly expressed outrage on social media. The center apologized for "any misunderstanding it may have caused" and changed the wording.

28

The Tuscaloosa News

Thursday, February 13, 2020

Harvard and Yale Ensnared in Education

Dept. Crackdown on Foreign Funding

By: Erica L. Green and Ellen Barry

WASHINGTON-A federal crackdown on universities that fail to disclose donations and contracts from foreign governments has ensnared Harvard and Yale, the Education Department said on Wednesday.

In letters to the schools on Tuesday, the department wrote that it was investigating whether the two Ivy League universities had failed to report at least $375 million from countries including China, Iran, Russia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The department is seeking extensive records related to grants, gifts, contracts and overseas programming.

In a letter to Harvard, the department said it was "aware of information suggesting Harvard University lacks appropriate institutional controls," and as a result, the university's reports to Washington may not include or fully reflect "all reportable gifts" and contracts "from or with foreign sources."

In the case of Yale, officials wrote that although the university had "a considerable presence abroad, represented by sites in dozens of cities and countries," it appeared to have "failed to report a single foreign source gift or contract in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 ."

The Education Department zeroed in on records related to two Chinese telecommunications companies, Huawei and ZTE, that the Trump administration has labeled security risks or sanctions violators. The Russian computer security firm Kaspersky Lab has also fallen under suspicion. The letters also named the Skolkovo Foundation of Russia, the Iran-linked Alavi Foundation and the Qatar National Research Fund, among other organizations.

The inquiry was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

"This is about transparency," Education Secretary Betsy De Vos said in a statement. "If colleges and universities are accepting foreign money and gifts, their students, donors and taxpayers deserve to know how much and from whom. Moreover, it's what the law requires."

Jonathan Swain, a Harvard spokesman, confirmed that the university was informed on Tuesday of the records request.

"We're reviewing it and beginning to start to compile our response to the Department of Education, which is going to take some time," he said.

Karen Peart, the director of Yale's media relations, also confirmed that the university had received the request on Tuesday.

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29

The Tuscaloosa News

Thursday, February 13, 2020

The letter to Harvard appears to have been prompted in part by an investigation into Charles M. Lieber, the chairman of the university's chemistry department, who was charged with lying to federal officials about grants he had received from China. The Education Department request asks for all records regarding Dr. Lieber's Chinese benefactors, the Thousand Talents recruitment program and the Wuhan University of Technology.

Dr. Lieber was arrested on Jan. 28 and released early this month on $1 million bond.

But the inquiry is also part of a broad crackdown that began last summer and was designed to force more scrutiny on funding for U.S. higher education institutions from countries that are often at odds with American policies but eager to tap the country's brightest minds.

The Education Department said Wednesday that since July, its enforcement efforts have prompted the reporting of about $6.5 billion in undisclosed foreign gifts, grants and contracts. Ten schools -Boston University, Carnegie Mellon, the University of Chicago, the University of Colorado at Boulder, Cornell, M.I.T., the University of Pennsylvania, Texas A&M, the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and Yale - declared approximately $3.6 billion in previously unreported foreign gifts.

The department announced in June that it was investigating whether Cornell, Georgetown, Rutgers and Texas A&M were fully complying with a federal law that required colleges to report all gifts and contracts from foreign sources that exceeded $250,000. In letters sent to the universities in July, department officials wrote that they were seeking records dating as far back as nine years, outlining agreements, communication and financial transactions with entities and governments in countries such as China, Qatar, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

The federal government demanded thousands of records that could reveal millions of dollars in foreign aid for campus operations overseas, academic research and other cultural and academic partnerships.

The investigations have caused friction between the Education Department and several higher education groups, which have urged the department to clarify the rules around an obscure provision, called Section 117, in the Higher Education Act. The provision requires colleges to report all gifts and contracts from foreign sources that exceed $250,000.

Education Department officials revealed last February in congressional testimony that fewer than 3 percent of 3,700 higher education institutions that receive foreign funding reported receiving foreign gifts or contracts exceeding $250,000.

"Unfortunately, the more we dig, the more we find that too many are underreporting or not reporting at all," Ms. De Vos said. "We will continue to hold colleges and universities accountable and work with them to ensure their reporting is full, accurate and transparent, as required by the law."

30

The Tuscaloosa News

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

NCAA president asks U.S. Senate to limit compensation for college athletes

NCAA President Mark Emmert urged Congress to put restrictions on

college athletes' ability to earn money.from endorsements.

By: Ben Nuckols, The Associated Press

WASHING TON - NCAA President Mark Emmert urged Congress to put restrictions on college athletes' ability to earn money from endorsements, telling a Senate committee Tuesday federal action is needed to "maintain uniform standards in college sports" amid player-friendly laws approved in California and under consideration in other states.

The NCAA last fall said it would allow players to "benefit" from the use of their name, image and likeness and is working on new rules it plans to reveal in April. Under the NCAA's timeline, athletes would be able to take advantage of endorsement opportunities beginning next January.

Meanwhile, more than 25 states are considering legislation that would force the NCAA to allow players to earn money off their personal brand in a bid to address inequities in the multi-billion­dollar college sports industry. California passed a law last year that gives broad endorsement rights to players and it will take effect in 2023. Other states could grant those rights as soon as this year.

The NCAA's concern, echoed by Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby, who also testified Tuesday, is that endorsement deals for athletes would have a negative effect on recruiting, with schools and boosters in states with athlete-friendly laws using money to entice players to sign with certain schools.

"If implemented, these laws would give some schools an unfair recruiting advantage and open the door to sponsorship arrangements being used as a recruiting inducement. This would create a huge imbalance among schools and could lead to corruption in the recruiting process," Emmert said. "We may need Congress' support in helping maintain uniform standards in college sports."

Emmert's comments were similar to what the NCAA, the Big 12 and the Atlantic Coast Conference have been communicating to Congress through well-paid lobbyists. The Associated Press has found that the NCAA and the two conferences spent $750,000 last year lobbying on Capitol Hill, in part to amplify their concern that "guardrails" are needed on endorsement pay for athletes to avoid destroying college sports as we know it.

Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican and the chairman of the Subcommittee on Manufacturing, Trade, and Consumer Protection, said he was not inclined to act until after the NCAA reveals its new rules.

"I wish Congress was in a position to be able to provide the NCAA and the athletes the opportunity to find a solution .... The ability for Congress to do that is, that's a challenge," Moran said in an interview after the hearing. "The next step is to see what the NCAA is capable of presenting to us in April."

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The Tuscaloosa News

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

NCAA critics believe there is plenty of evidence that recruiting is already corrupt - pointing in part to the federal criminal case involving shoe companies paying basketball players to attend schools they sponsor- and that letting players earn endorsement money won't create the major problems the NCAA predicts.

Ramogi Huma, executive director of the National College Players' Association, which advocates for athletes' rights, said under current NCAA rules, 99.3% of top-100 football recruits choose teams from the Power Five conferences.

"The power conferences have advantages and they consistently pull the best recruits," Huma said. "They will continue to get the recruits. The reality is, you're not going to change the recruiting by limiting the players' opportunities."

Huma said once states start granting players endorsement rights, Congress would not be inclined to take those rights away, "and we'll have an opportunity to witness the fact that NCAA sports will still be strong and everybody will tune in."

There was bipartisan agreement among the senators at the hearing that athletes should have access to endorsement opportunities and that some regulations are necessary.

Emmert did not fully escape lawmakers' anger at the system he presides over.

Sen. Marsha Blackbum, a Tennessee Republican, excoriated Emmert for the NCAA's handling of sexual violence against women. She also noted the case of James Wiseman, a top NBA prospect who left school after he was suspended over $11,500 given to his mother by Memphis coach Penny Hardaway to help with moving expenses. Hardaway gave the money before he was Memphis' coach.

Blackbum said the NCAA's lack of consistency and transparency in the Wiseman case had eroded trust in the organization's ability to handle issues of player benefits.

"I think a question that must be going through a lot of minds of student-athletes and their parents is, how in the world are they going to be able to trust you to get this right?" Blackbum said.

32

The Birmingham News

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Vanderbilt AD Malcolm Turner resigns;

Alabama native Candice Storey Lee takes

over as interim AD

By: Creg Stephenson

Malcolm Turner has resigned as Vanderbilt's athletics director, a little more than a year after taking over in the job.

He's being replaced by Candice Storey Lee, who will make history in her new position as interim vice chancellor for athletics and university affairs and interim athletic director. Lee, a graduate of Madison's Bob Jones High School, will be the first woman to head up an SEC athletic department in the conference's 87-year history.

Lee, who played basketball for the Commodores from 1996-2000, had been the school's deputy athletics director since 2016. Holding bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from Vanderbilt, she has worked at the school in various administrative capacities since 2004.

"Candice embodies the Vanderbilt Way, which is our commitment to ensuring that student­athletes excel on the field of play, academically and in life," Vanderbilt interim chancellor and provost Susan R. Wente said. "Candice is a trailblazer. Her unparalleled work ethic, energy and vision, and steadfast commitment to the Commodore family, will only build on our momentum."

Turner took over following the retirement of the beloved David Williams, who died suddenly just eight days after stepping down in February 2019. Most notably, he fired basketball coach Bryce Drew after an 0-18 finish in the SEC (and replaced him with former NBA star Jerry Stackhouse) and decided to keep on football coach Derek Mason following a 3-9 season.

"In a year of change and transition, it's been a privilege to be a Commodore and witness firsthand the transformative power of the intersection of higher education and athletics. Vanderbilt Athletics has accomplished a great deal during my time at Vanderbilt, and the university's athletics program and student-athletes are poised for future success," Turner said. "However, at the onset of this next critical phase of key Athletics initiatives and after considering certain family commitments important to me, I have elected to pursue new opportunities.

"I fully support what will surely be an exciting next chapter for Vanderbilt Athletics and wish the entire Vanderbilt family the very best going forward. Thank you.'"

33

The Tuscaloosa News

Sunday,February16,2020

Wilder ready for anything with rematch with

Fury

By: Edwin Stanton

It's been a little over two years since Deontay Wilder fought Tyson Fury in Los Angeles, which ended in a draw.

That means Wilder's had plenty oftime to review the tape and figure out a new strategy.

He and the rest of the world will find out Saturday how good a plan it is with Wilder vs. Fury II at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Wilder's been eager for this rematch since their first go-around in December of 2018. The Tuscaloosa native was critical of his performance in that first meeting with Fury and said he didn't fight with his usual style.

"In that first fight I was probably 50 percent or less coming into that fight," Wilder said. "I didn't fight like I normally fight. There's a lot of things that I did that I don't normally do. Especially when I look back at that fight, me and (trainer Jay Deas) can pinpoint so much, like look 'man, I don't even do that. Why did I did that? Why did I do this?'

I knocked him out the first time, I didn't get it, but I'm going to knock him out this time again and this time he's not getting up, that's for sure. I promise you that.

Fury has also had time to plan and strategize and made a bold move in December to ditch trainer Ben Davidson for Emanuel Steward. Fury, who was knocked down twice in the first match, stated he wants to bring the fight to Wilder this time around.

"I really don't know what's their plans are or what he's going to do or wheat he's not going to do," Wilder said earlier this week. I know one thing, that I'm prepared for anything that he brings to the table. I'm overly prepared for whatever. So if you want to bring the fight, then come on, let's make it happen, that'll benefit me more than anything, him coming full at me.

"As you can see, I brought the fight to him, nearly the whole fight the first time. And ifhe wants to do the reverse and bring it to me and bring all the force to me while I'm already applying force throwing at him, then it's going to be an interesting fight."

Wilder said he didn't watch Fury's last fight, a win against Otto Wallin in September, but he does know the details of the bout and could get some valuable insight. In that bout Wallin gave Fury a nasty gash over his right eye and the bout could have been stopped by the ringside doctor.

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The Tuscaloosa News

Sunday, February 16, 2020

"I definitely look forward to re-cutting open that eye," Wilder said. "Once it is open and blood is all in his face, I might get a little bit on me as well, it's all right, we'll see if they continue to keep that fight on because I'm already dangerous as is.

"And if that eye cut open again and it got blood in his face, then that's going to be up to the doctors, because I'm coming in for the kill. They already know my demeanor about myself, you already know my main reason, and you know what I come to do.

"Deep down in his heart, I really feel that he's nervous. I really feel that he's very, very nervous from the first time of what happened."

35

The Birmingham News

Friday, February 7, 2020

UAB to retire Aaron Johnson's jersey By: Evan Dudley

On the Southside of Birmingham, more than a decade ago, a night of peaceful sleep is disturbed by the piercing buzzes of an old digital alarm clock.

The sun has spent maybe an hour above the horizon but the air is already drenched in sweat from a sweltering 90-degree morning, intensifying on a steaming summer day in the largest concrete forest in Alabama.

Then a 19-year-old entering his sophomore year at UAB, a young Aaron Johnson argues with himself before finding enough of a convincing argument to leave his cool dry sheets for a day­long training marathon that starts with suffocating runs along the streets of the Magic City.

The clock hasn't even hit noon and Johnson is chased into the gym by unrelenting pressure from an unforgiving sun. Barely able to stand after a sweltering pace, he hits the weights before working on technique. At least 1,000 shots go up before ending the day with ball-handling drills that draw the last bit of strength from his arms.

Johnson doesn't miss the life-draining feeling at the end of the day, but the never-ending day-to­day grind of a Division I college basketball player might be what he misses most about his illustrious career as a Blazer.

From the south Chicago neighborhood of Englewood, to Birmingham and even Europe, Johnson's journey comes full circle as the UAB basketball program is set to retire his #1 jersey during the Blazers' matchup with North Texas, Saturday, Feb. 8, at Bartow Arena in Birmingham.

"I never thought about how quickly it came," Johnson said. "Honestly, I never saw this happening. I just wanted to be a great player. I wanted to leave a legacy and I wanted to win games. I never really thought about how quickly it happened."

Along with joining former head coach and founder of the program, Gene Bartow, and three former players that include Jerome Mincy, Steve Mitchell and Oliver Robinson, Johnson is also in his first season as a graduate assistant with the team.

"I'm really excited for AJ and I think this is a very well-deserved honor," UAB head coach Robert Ehsan said. "His legacy at UAB goes way beyond the basketball court as he impacted so many in our community in a positive way. I'm extremely grateful to have him start his coaching career as a part of our staff as he continues to affect UAB basketball in a positive way."

***

For Johnson, there was always something about playing in Birmingham.

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Growing up in a fast-paced world in the third-largest city in the country, he was unsure of what to expect when he arrived on his official recruiting visit. However, he was already sold on the program by former head coach Mike Davis and made his commitment beforehand.

"I tell people all the time that Birmingham is a small Chicago, but a lot slower," Johnson said. "I get the same feeling. I committed here before I visited because I was in-tune with the coaches and I liked how they were talking to me and the way they pursued me."

"When I committed, I was thinking it was going to be country and am I ready for Alabama," he added. "But when I got here, it was totally different. I got the city atmosphere and I got to meet people from Greensboro and these small cities. It was a perfect fit, it really was a perfect fit. It gave me a slower pace and time to focus on me. That's one of the reasons why I picked U AB and one the reasons why I'm still here."

Johnson flourished and defined the notion of team-first basketball in leading the Blazers to one NCAA tournament and three NIT appearances while setting the school record for career assists (664).

Additionally, he led the team in assists all four seasons of his UAB career and set the single­season school record for assists (239) during his senior season while leading the NCAA with 7.7 assists per game and winning the 2011 Conference USA Player of the Year award.

Following his college career, Johnson made the move to the European leagues and played in Italy for two seasons before becoming a first-round draft pick of the Bakersfield Jam, a former D-League team that now operates under the Phoenix Suns as the Northern Arizona Suns in theNBA's G-League.

Johnson played 18 games for the Jam - averaging 5.8 ppg, I.I rpg and 3.7 apg with five starts­before returning to Europe where he spent the remaining five and a half years of his professional career in Finland, Romania, Poland and Latvia. For his nine-year European career, Johnson averaged 10.5 ppg, 2.2 rpg and 5.9 apg while also appearing in four FIBA Europe Cup games where he averaged 14.8 points, 4.5 rebounds and 6.8 assists.

Once the moment came that Johnson knew his time on the court was finished, an opportunity presented itself to return to UAB and begin his coaching career while finishing his master's degree.

"That was big for me, that was everything," he said. "During my last season as a pro, I told my wife all the time that I didn't want to go anywhere else but UAB. I didn't want to start at any other school. UAB is my home, Birmingham is my home, and that's where I want to be."

"When I came back and Coach Ehsan opened the doors for me to go back to school, get my masters and be around the team, it was a no brainer," he added. "It was a 'yes' right away. It was where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do."

Now, five months after joining the UAB staff, Johnson doesn't have to travel far to see his name lifted into the rafters of Bartow Arena.

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The Birmingham News Friday, February 7, 2020

While Johnson gets a nostalgic feeling reminiscing about those long hot summer days, he realizes that it's now his responsibility to instill that same drive and commitment to the young men he helps to mold.

He's all too aware of the quality of basketball in the state and is even more impressed with the speed in which the sport continues to grow in popularity in a football dominated region.

"Basketball is surprisingly good in this state," Johnson said. "I was surprised at the talent that came out of this state when I got here, the talent that used to come to open gym here when I was here. Eric Bledsoe, a good friend of mine, and DeMarcus Cousins, they used to come up here and play with us."

Bledsoe and Cousins eventually spent their short-lived college careers outside of Alabama before jumping to the NBA, but Johnson's peer group illuminates the fact that he is the first modem UAB player- one must have earned AP All-American honors and their undergraduate degree­to have his number retired.

Mincy and Mitchell played their final seasons in 1986 while Robinson finished his UAB career in 1982.

And it was Mitchell, along with other close associates, to jump-start the process for Johnson.

"I know I had a lot of people in my comer rooting for this to happen," Johnson said. "This didn't come overnight. It wasn't something done in a year or two years. I had people backing me and one was a lady I call Miss Stephanie, I call her my mom, she was really behind me and pushing for this."

"And also Steve (Mitchell)," he added. "He was like, 'You done what you needed to do and it should happen.' He was really helping push the envelope for this. Whether it happened 20 years from now or 50 years from now, I still don't believe it. It's an unbelievable feeling."

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The Tuscaloosa News

Friday, February 7, 2020

78 Alabama Student-Athletes Earn SEC Fall

Academic Honor Roll Accolades

By: Sports Digest

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - The University of Alabama placed 78 student-athletes on the 2019 Fall Southeastern Conference Academic Honor Roll, the conference office announced Friday. The Crimson Title's total ranked fifth overall and fourth among teams that don't sponsor men's soccer.

The Tide led the league in women's soccer with 19 and volleyball with 11. A total of 29 members of Alabama's football team earned a place on the honor roll. The women's cross country team tallied 12 honors, while the men's team totaled seven.

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The Tuscaloosa News

Sunday, February 2, 2020

Alabama track and field wins five events at

Relays

By: Tide Sports

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - The University of Alabama track and field team closed out the Indiana University Relays winning four events on Saturday.

In men's shot put, Isaac Odugbesan's throw of 19.26 meters earned a victory and the top mark among collegians. On Friday, Alabama's Bobby Colantonio Jr. broke the school record in the men's weight throw and finished as the top-collegian with a launch of 77-02.75.

Tamara Clark won the women's 60-meter dash (7.30). Takyera Roberson (53.83) won the women's 400 meter run with the top time from all collegians. In the women's 3000 meters, Mercy Chelangat clocked in at 9:22.64, posting the best collegiate time of the day. Rounding out the five wins was the women's 4x400-meter relay squad of Clark, D'Jai Baker, Takyera Roberson and Natassha McDonald (3:38.15).

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·Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Alabama softball players preseason All­

Americans

By: Tide Sports

Alabama softball players Montana Fouts and Bailey Hemphill earned spots on the Dlsoftball's preseason All-America list, which was released Monday.

Fouts, a sophomore, won 21 games for the Crimson Tide, which finished No. 4 in the country last year and is preseason No. 1 for 2020. She had 193 strikeouts in 181.2 innings with a 1.39 earned run average.

Hemphill set the school single-season home run (26) and RBI (84) record last season and hit .375.

Fouts and Hemphill were both second-team All-Americans last season.

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The Tuscaloosa News

Friday, February 14, 2020

Alabama softball tops No. 1 Washington,

sweeps first day of Invite By: Staff report

The Alabama softball team won its first two games at the St. Pete/Clearwater Elite Invitational on Thursday, defeating Liberty 7-1 before posting an 8-0 shutout in five innings over top-ranked Washington.

The win over the Huskies (6-1) was the first run-rule shutout over the top-ranked team in the country for Alabama (3-3) and its first shutout of No. 1 since the 2017 NCAA Regional round vs. Minnesota.

"What a great day for Crimson Tide softball on the biggest stage of the year thus far," Alabama coach Patrick Murphy said. "Sometimes, a team needs a little more time to gel and come together. We still have a lot to work on. I'm really proud of both Krystal (Goodman) and Lexi (Kilfoyl) for giving us great starts today. It starts in the circle, and they both shined."

Goodman (1-0) allowed just one run in the win over Liberty (1-5) before Kilfoyl (2-2) held the top-ranked Huskies scoreless on just one hit and two walks with six strikeouts.

Skylar Wallace paced the offense with a 4-for-7 day while Kaylee Tow and KB Sides each had three hits, combining to score seven of the Title's 15 runs.

Freshman Abby Doerr made her Crimson Tide debut, blasting a two-run home run against the Flames in her second career at-bat.

Bailey Hemphill sent one over the wall against the Huskies, pushing her career total to 49 which sits five shy of fourth-place Amanda Locke (2008-12).

Alabama senior outfielder Elissa Brown underwent successful surgery this week for a broken hand and is out indefinitely but is expected to make a full recovery and return later this season.

Alabama continues play at the St. Pete/Clearwater Elite Invitational with a pair of games Friday, facing USF (9:30 a.m.) and third-ranked UCLA (3 p.m.).

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Wednesday, Febuary 5, 2020

Alabama softball fast, athletic and versatile

By: Edwin Stanton

One thing Patrick Murphy has plenty of this season is options.

It seems the Crimson Tide softball coach has more choices than a Waffle House menu.

There are big-time athletes on the 2020 roster for sure. But they are also versatile, able to run, hit, field, and pitch.

"Talking with Skylar (Wallace) today, she can literally play all four infield positions, all three outfield positions and catch," said Murphy, who enters his 22nd year at the helm for the Crimson Tide. "A kid like Lexi Kilfoyl can play first, she is going to pitch and she's going to hit. Bailey (Hemphill) can play first, catcher and could play third base ifl really needed her to. She played shortstop in high school, which nobody believes but she did.

"We just have a lot of good, athletic kids, which is really exciting. I think speed is going to be one of our best things this year. Team speed, team defense, the ability of a lot of people to play different positions."

The Crimson Tide starts its 2020 campaign this weekend at the Joanne Graf Classic in Tallahassee, Florida. UA opens the season with a pair of games Friday, the first against North Carolina and the second vs. 8th-ranked Florida State.

Those options have already come in handy. In the fall Alabama lost starting shortstop Claire Jenkins to a tom ACL. Wallace, who was on the 2019 All-SEC Freshman team, slid over from second base to take over at shortstop. Graduate transfer Alexis Mack, an outfielder, has come in to play second base to solidify the middle infield.

"Just a confident kid and very athletic," Murphy said of Mack, who transferred from Oregon. "Between the two of them that might be the best range of those two spots we've ever had because they are both faster than anything."

Alabama finished last season 60-10 and ranked No. 4. The motivation from last season was fueled by a No. 8 preseason SEC ranking, which didn't sit well with the Crimson Tide.

Alabama starts off at No. 1 this season.

"That has nothing to do with this year, it has to do with what we did last year and what you have coming back and what you have coming in," Murphy said. "It's a sign of respect for that and that's how we took it and we appreciate it.

"But now it's like, you have to prove it all over again. There are a lot of kids that want to prove something. Mack knows on her phone how many days it's been since she last put on a uniform. She's that ready to go. That's what you want."

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Alabama baseball opens season picked to

finish last in SEC

By: Mike Rodak

Alabama baseball finished last in the SEC West last season, and that is where the league's coaches predicted the Crimson Tide will place again this spring.

The SEC's 14 head coaches picked Alabama to be the worst team in the conference in a preseason poll released last week. Vanderbilt was picked to repeat as champions. Alabama, which has not been selected to the NCAA baseball tournament since 2014, will begin a three-game series Friday at Sewell-Thomas Stadium against Northeastern to kick off its regular season.

The game will begin at 3 p.m. and air on SEC Network+. Left-handed freshman freshman Connor Prielipp will take the mound against the Huskies, who have never played Alabama.

The Tide are led offensively by junior outfielder Tyler Gentry, who led Alabama as a sophomore last season in batting average (.301), home runs (13), RBI (42) and slugging percentage (.552) in 55 starts. He was selected to the preseason All-SEC second team, the only Alabama player recognized on an all-conference team prior to the spring.

"It'll be a really, really fun team to watch," coach Brad Bohannon said. "It's a really above average offensive group. They play hard and play with a lot of positive energy."

Alabama finished with a 30-26 overall record and 7-23 mark in the conference last season, Bohannon's second at the helm.

The Tide begin conference play March 13 against Missouri. Nine of the team's games are slated to air on national television, beginning with a March 8 meeting with Lipscomb on SEC Network.

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The Tuscaloosa News

Sunday, February 2, 2020

Alabama uses Rapsodo in data revolution

By: Brett Hudson

Kyle Cameron's fastball is the perfect example of why the Alabama baseball team invested in Rapsodo.

The senior right-handed pitcher was running into a problem over the fall: he was not getting swings and misses with his fastball at a good rate. He was toying around with a four-seam fastball grip, but conventional wisdom would deem that counter-intuitive: Cameron delivers from a three-quarter arm slot, thus a more lateral delivery is more likely to deliver the lateral movement of a two-seam than the true vertical plane of a four-seamer.

Cameron, it turns out, is an exception. Rapsodo showed impressive spin rate and spin efficiency numbers when he threw his fastball with a four-seam grip. Once he made the change, his swing­and-miss percentage jumped 10 percent for the rest of the fall.

Alabama pitching coach Jason Jackson brought UA into the data age of baseball when he arrived as part of head coach Brad Bohannon's staff after the 2017 season. Jackson asked around the baseball community and decided on Rapsodo, getting it in just before the staffs first season in 2018. They start their third year on the job Feb. 14 with a three-game series against Northeastern, and the data age has served UA well in more ways than one.

"I think the kids today are just more visual and they're a little bit more data-driven," Jackson said. "You need to be able to speak that language with them and show them stuff."

In that sense, Rapsodo has helped Jackson communicate with his players. He relayed the story of a freshman on a previous Alabama team who had a breaking ball-forward approach. His curveball was good and he could throw it for strikes, thus his fastball was not a go-to pitch. Jackson thought the fastball was good enough to be a featured pitch, though, and encouraged him to use it more often, particularly high in the strike zone.

The response: '"Thanks Coach, yeah whatever,' keeps flipping curveballs," Jackson said.

Then Jackson showed the pitcher the Rapsodo data on his fastball. It compared favorably to average Major League fastballs in its spin rate, and the Rapsodo proved the movement Jackson saw in it, too. All of a sudden the pitcher realized he had a next-level fastball, so he started throwing it more.

"As a coach, you see it, but the data on that screen just confirms what your eyes are already telling you," Jackson said. "It helps for them to be able to see it. In that one instance, it gave him a lot of confidence to be able to use those numbers and stack those numbers up against somebody else's in the big leagues and say, 'Wow, OK. Now I'll buy it."'

Rapsodo gives them enough data to make nearly limitless tweaks.

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Seth Daniels, the Director of Diamond Sports for Rapsodo, said the system measures velocity plus data on spin and release. On spin, it measures total spin but also breaks that spin into three categories: vertical spin, side spin and gyro spin. Vertical spin correlates to vertical break and side spin correlates to horizontal break, while gyro spin does not correlate to movement. The amount of vertical spin and side spin creates a pitch's true spin, another metric tracked by Rapsodo, which leads to the most important spin metric: spin efficiency, the percent of total spin that is true spin.

The system also tracks release height and the horizontal and vertical angle of the release, giving pitchers even more data to monitor as they toy with different grips and releases on pitches. Release information can be useful for pitch tunneling or even avoiding pitch tipping, ensuring there is no delivery difference between pitch types that hitters can pick up on.

"The term that's gotten a lot of attention is pitch design: the ability to see the characteristics of your pitches and be able to mold those characteristics to a desired outcome, if you will. This is sort of that unique perspective," Daniels said. "Not everybody is meant to be a really hard­throwing righty that sits up in the zone and has high vertical break. This tool can help you decipher who that is."

Monitoring spin efficiency as tweaks are made is how Cameron made his new four-seam fastball as effective as it was at the end of the fall.

"A four-seam you want a higher spin rate. You want it to be as straight as possible so it has the illusion of a rise effect, and that's what we track with Rapsodo, vertical axis," Cameron said. "When I'm throwing in the pen and we've got Rapsodo out, that's what we're looking for: a high spin rate and you want it to be as close to 12 o'clock as you possibly can. That means it's exactly upright."

The illusion of a rise effect is created by high spin rates and nearly perfect spin efficiency, giving the batter the illusion that the pitch is rising despite gravity's obvious deterrence of that effect. This tends to lead to batters swinging underneath fastballs high in the zone, a trend that has been prominent in MLB in recent years and is beginning to make select collegiate pitchers more effective, too.

"The spin rate was better, spin efficiency was better and I ended up having better results against hitters," Cameron said.

UA is taking the Rapsodo data a step further, beyond the pitch design it is most often used for. They're combining it with Edgertronic cameras to give pitchers a database of their best stuff for reference when they lose it.

The Rapsodo data on a pitch is displayed within five seconds of the pitch being thrown. Since Rapsodo's data allows them to know a good pitch as soon as they see it, they can mark said pitch with the Edgertronic camera, a specialized high-speed camera. That way, a pitcher can watch themselves throw that excellent pitch and see exactly how they did it.

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Sunday, February 2, 2020

"Each guy has a folder," Jackson said. "This was a good 'pen, let's mark this, so when he's in a bad spot in a month, we can see what it looked like when it was going really good."

For those that are well-versed in baseball's data revolution, or are at least open to it, Rapsodo and accompanying accessories give Jackson any tool he could possibly want to teach a player. But not all players are better with a hand in the data, and he recognizes that.

"Some guys don't even like to look at it, and I don't force them. I spoon feed it to them as they need it," Jackson said. "Landon Green's just a good ol' boy from Helena, Alabama, he don't care about that thing. Just give me the ball and let me go pitch, you know?

"Then there are guys that have grown up with it, they know it. You might have to direct them a little bit - like a lot of things, they might not know as much as they think they know - but they've dabbled with it and you have to be able to speak their language with it. You have some guys that really proficient in it: they know when they're going good, this is what happens and they want to see where they are."

As the years pass, there will be more and more pitchers coming to UA with at least beginner knowledge of Rapsodo and other baseball data services. Alabama is well positioned to give them what they need and develop them.

"Some of these kids that are going into college now have been on it since they were 14," Daniels said. "That's four years of data, understanding and terminology that previously just didn't exist."

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The Tuscaloosa News

Monday, February 17, 2020

Diodati shines in Tide's weekend sweep

By: Brett Hudson

Northeastern had seen enough of Owen Diodati after nine at-bats.

In those nine at-bats, over the first three days of his Alabama baseball career, Diodati pummeled the Huskies with six hits, five of them for extra bases and three of them leaving Sewell-Thomas Stadium. He drove in eight runs and even reached base three times on walks. His Sunday hits alone had Diodati a double away from the cycle.

Diodati will have to wait for his 10th collegiate at-bat and his cycle. Northeastern chose to intentionally walk him in the seventh inning.

The maneuver worked: Northeastern was trying to prevent a three-run lead from stretching to four, and a popup did just that. By then, Diodati's damage was already done.

Diodati's home run, triple and single on Sunday finished a flurry of an opening weekend for the freshman: 6-for-9, a double, a triple, three home runs and eight RBI for a 2.000 slugging percentage. His production helped UA beat Northeastern 6-3 on Sunday and secure a three-game sweep of the Huskies.

"I can't lie, I didn't expect that, but I was lucky enough to see the ball really well this weekend and obviously have a good start," Diodati said. "This is something me and (UA) Coach (Brad Bohannon) have talked about a lot: how baseball isn't easy and there's a lot of weekends that don't go like this. I think just staying level and not getting too high at times like this, and low when you have the 0-for-4 days or the 0-for-15 weekend. It was pretty special to start this way."

Diodati's Sunday started with a RBI single in the first, one that cut an early deficit down to one run. Brett Auerbach's home run in the second tied the game; in the third, Diodati's two-run blast off of Northeastern freshman starter Sebastian Keane (0-1) gave UA its first lead, one it would never relinquish.

Diodati later tripled off the right-center wall; he didn't know that triple put him so close to the cycle until a pitcher told him in the dugout, which he wishes he didn't know. He knew he would think about it in his next at-bat, when he was given an intentional walk.

"It's obviously an honor to have that, especially in that situation," Diodati said. "As a hitter I like to hit, but I'm never gonna complain about a free bag. That's how you help your team win. It was really cool, for sure."

Bohannon added, "You never know how it's going to go for a freshman. Owen's a guy, I could've told you a year ago I had really, really high expectations for him, but you never know who's going to be nervous at first, who's going to get off to a hot start and how they're going to handle the distractions of college and being away from home, some failure and all that. I'm not

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surprised that these guys did great today. But you don't ever slap three homers and a triple on a freshman right away."

Diodati's production was needed after starting pitcher Antoine Jean (1-0) struggled early. His start began with a four-pitch walk, a first-pitch single and a throwing error he committed, which allowed a run to score.

Northeastern (0-3) plated three in that first inning; Jean retired nine of the 11 batters he faced in the next three innings.

"I had better command of all three of my pitches," Jean said. "I think in the first inning, after the walk, I don't think it was necessarily bad pitches, I just put myself in some trouble with the walk and the bad pitch to third base. I was just throwing more strikes and getting ahead in the counts, so it worked pretty good after."

Jean handed it over to Jacob McNairy and Chase Lee, who combined for five innings of scoreless relief with eight strikeouts to one hit and no walks allowed. Lee retired all six batters he faced in a two-inning save (1).

"Chase Lee just looked unhittable," Bohannon said. "I think maybe you guys now can see when I say there's just not a whole lot of separation. You could've started McNairy today and brought Antoine in after him, same thing with Casey Cobb and Tyler Ras or any of the guys that have pitched the last few days. That's a really good thing.

"Chase and Jacob were awesome and they're both going to be a huge piece of whatever success we have this year."

Alabama (3-0) continues its five-game homestand to start the season with a Tuesday game against Troy at 3 p.m. and a Wednesday game against Alabama State at 2 p.m.

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The Tuscaloosa News

Monday, February 10, 2020

Alabama women complete sweep of Auburn

By: Staff Report

The Alabama women's basketball team won a close-fought contest against rival Auburn, 68-64, on Sunday afternoon inside Coleman Coliseum in the annual Power of Pink/Play4Kay game. With the win, the Crimson Tide (14-10, 4-7 SEC) sweeps the season series against the Tigers (8-13, 2-8 SEC) for the first time since 2002.

The game went back-and-forth, with the biggest lead being six points for either team. Redshirt junior Jordan Lewis made five free throws in the final 19 seconds to put the game out of reach.

Junior Ariyah Copeland had an outstanding performance for the Tide, recording her second double-double of the season with 17 points and 13 rebounds. Lewis scored 13 points and tied her season-high in rebounds with seven, while sophomore Brittany Davis contributed 12 points off the bench. Eight of the 10 players who checked in for Alabama found themselves in the scoring column.

"I just really appreciate our crowd today, what an incredible atmosphere with everybody that came out to support us," said head coach Kristy Curry. "I know we had 20-plus high school teams in the building as well, to kind of end their season here by watching Alabama and Auburn. For those ladies that we recognized pregame that have been through so much and then we get to just simply play a game and honor their fight against cancer, which is really, really special. It was a special day, we are glad we could show some fight down the stretch and finish with a win."

Auburn used a 6-0 spurt to tie its largest lead of the game at 45-39 with 3:34 left to play in the third quarter. Alabama answered back with a few buckets of its own and a layup by senior Amber Richardson pulled the Tide within three points to close out the third quarter. The Tigers took the 50-4 7 advantage into the final period.

Alabama got off to a hot start to begin the fourth quarter, taking its first lead since early in the third at 54-53 with 7:04 left. The Tigers knotted the game at 56-56 with 3:08 to play. Auburn pulled ahead with a free throw, but Copeland converted on two free throws to give Alabama a 60-59 lead with 1 :45 remaining.

The Tigers countered with two made free throws, but junior Jasmine Walker drained a 3-pointer from the comer to put UA ahead 63-61 with just over a minute left. Lewis converted on key free throws down the stretch to put Alabama up 66-61 with nine seconds left. Auburn hit a three to cut the score to 66-64 with five seconds left, but Lewis added two more from the line to put the game out ofreach and give the Tide the 68-64 victory.

Copeland went 6-of-8 (75 percent) and a perfect 5-of-5 from the free throw line to set a new season high of 17 points and 13 rebounds in her seventh career double-double.

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Lewis was 7-of-8 (88 percent) from the free throw line, knocking down five clutch free-throws in the last 19 seconds of the game.

The Tide came up big on the boards, outrebounding the Tigers 41-34.

Alabama shot 41 percent (22-of-54) from the field, while holding Auburn to just 36 percent (22-of-61) from the floor. Free throws were key down the stretch with the Tide shooting 17-of-19 (89 percent) at the line.

Alabama travels to Athens, Ga., on Sunday, Feb. 16 to face the Georgia Bulldogs. Tipoff is set for 12 p.m. with the game being broadcast on SEC Network.

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Saturday, February 15, 2020

Bittersweet victory for Tide gymnastics By: Cecil Hurt

The University of Alabama gymnastics team was set to celebrate '80's Night against Arkansas on Friday but had little idea that the appropriate soundtrack would be the power ballad from Poison: "Every Rose Has Its Thom."

That turned out to be the case as Alabama gymnast Griffin James suffered what Alabama head coach Dana Duckworth described as "an Achilles injury." That resulted in James being carried from the floor by the UA medical staff, an occurrence that not only caused obvious personal consternation for the other Crimson Tide gymnasts, put Alabama in a precarious competitive situation against No. 21 Arkansas.

Alabama had already had to count a fall on the balance beam and, with James unable to complete her floor routine, would have to have five strong floor performances to win.

The No. 6-ranked Crimson Tide got those performances, including three 9.925 scores. That was just enough for UA to edge the visiting Razorbacks, 196.625-196.100. That score was well short of the season-high 197.550 Alabama recorded a week earlier at its Power of Pink Meet, but represented what Duckworth called a "courageous" effort.

"I want to applaud the floor team for the University of Alabama because that was the epitome of 'For Her," Duckworth said. "We have some of our other athletes who have had the same kind of injury that Griffin had, so you can imagine how they felt seeing that happen.

"But we have a term called 'fierce grace' that we use all the time. I think you saw that tonight. They were fiercely competitive and then, at the end, they were crying because they don't want to see one of their sisters hurt." Before the team began its final rotation on the floor, they had huddled together for extra inspiration at overcoming a 48.525 score on the beam.

"Alabama gymnastics isn't about quitting," said Shallon Olsen. "We just decided to step up on that next rotation. Then Griffin was hurt, It's really hard to see someone get hurt before me, right before my eyes. But you flip it. You go out and do it for her." Duckworth said the team's strong closing performance was especially impressive after the Crimson Title's beam issues.

"The (balance beam) was very uncharacteristic for our team," Duckworth said. "We tried some new things as far as our order of competitors. We have a strong team, eight beam workers we feel about. But I thought after the first fall, we became hesitant, not aggressive." Alabama did have some high spots, including the consecutive 9.925 floor routines from Olsen, Shea Mahoney and Maddie Desch. Alonza Klopfer had a much-needed 9.850 on the balance beam. Makarri Doggette won the bars with a 9.900, but felt knee pain on her landing and did not compete in the final two events. Lexi Graber won the vault with a 9.900.

Kennedy Hambrick of Arkansas was the meet's top all-around performer with a 39.400.

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The Tuscaloosa News Tuesday, February 4, 2020

With loss of Jones, communication key for Alabama basketball

By: Cecil Hurt

Without Herb Jones, the most versatile player on the University of Alabama basketball roster, the Crimson Tide misses more than scoring, rebounding and defense.

According to John Petty, perhaps the biggest absence will be communication.

"Herb will be on the bench but Kira (Lewis) and I have to step up," Petty said as he met with the media on Monday in advance of Tuesday' s SEC game against Tennessee at Coleman Coliseum. "You can hear him from the bench but we have to pick up our voices on the floor. I'm one of the leaders of the team. It' s been a rough week but that's when you have to show leadership."

The week started for Petty with his first missed start of the season, a disciplinary move by UA coach Nate Oats that Petty says he knew was going to happen.

"We talked about it and he just said he had to do what he had to do," Petty said. "I knew it was coming. I' d been loafing around (at practice) for a couple of days. I owned it and said I would be a man about it and not let it happen again."

Things got even tougher for UA when Jones went out in the first half of the LSU game with a fractured wrist.

"He told me on the bench that he fractured it," Petty said. "He could feel it. But he kept on trying to play."

Petty played with more fire in Saturday's home loss to Arkansas, grabbing nine rebounds although he continued to struggle with his 3-point shooting, making just 1 of 5 attempts .

Tennessee at Alabama

When: 6 p.m.

Where: Coleman Coliseum

Records: Alabama (12-9, 4-4 SEC); Tennessee (12-9, 4-4 SEC)

TV: ESPNU

Radio: 95 .3 FM

"John was better at practice today," Oats said on Monday. "He was very vocal. A lot of the guys were. John has a high IQ. He knows what he needs to do."

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The Tuscaloosa News

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Beetle Bolden, the Crimson Tide senior guard who has missed the last two games with a gastrointestinal illness, was back at practice Monday and should be available for Tuesday's game against Tennessee, at least in a limited role.

"Beetle looked pretty good today," Oats said. "I'm pretty sure he'll go limited tomorrow. His energy's not up enough to play as many minutes as he was playing in the past. But ifhe can play, it gives us another guard, which helps."

Tennessee, looking to snap a three-game losing streak, will present a different set of matchup issues than Arkansas, which played five guards at once in some stretches of Saturday's win over Alabama.

"It's almost the exact opposite," Oats said. "In their last game (at Mississippi State), they went with three bigs and two guards some of the time, playing a power forward at the small forward spot. So now it's back to playing physical and rebounding for us."

Tennessee is the No. 306 team in the NCAA in offensive tempo, while Alabama continues to lead all Power Six teams in that statistic. Part of the Vols' slower pace goes back to the loss of point guard Lamonte Turner, who underwent season-ending shoulder surgery in December.

"They don't run much," Oats said. "They have to run their offense, which they are good at. They do have (Santiago) Vesconi (a Uruguayan National Team player who was granted transfer eligibility by the NCAA). He can shoot it, and has a high basketball IQ, but he's having to play 40 minutes because they don't have their point guy."

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The Tuscaloosa News

Sunday, February 2, 2020

Herb Jones' absence will be felt in more ways

than one

By: Cecil Hurt

Kyle Cameron's fastball is the perfect example of why the Alabama baseball team invested in The University of Alabama basketball team honored its 1990 SEC Tournament champions on Saturday, a

group of good individuals as well as long, lean, fast athletes and defensive-minded players, if not by

nature then at least in response to what several referred to as the "mashing" they received from their

coach, Wimp Sanderson.

Familiar names like Keith Askins, Hollywood Robinson, Gary Waites and Robert Horry were there, along with fan favorites like Marcus Webb, as physically imposing as ever, and Ernest "Snake" Brown, as entertaining as ever.

They were there to fraternize and reminisce, moreso that to conduct interviews. Horry, still processing the death of his former Los Angeles Laker teammate Kobe Bryant less than a week ago, talked about the importance of family and the way in which he regarded his teammates - at Andalusia High School, Alabama, and at his various NBA stops -as part of that family.

The 1990 team was built largely, not entirely but in many areas, on players from the state, or its near neighbors. There were similarities to this year's team as well as obvious differences. The thought was obvious, though: Herb Jones was just the sort of player that would have fit in perfectly on that team.

Now, Jones doesn't even have a spot on his own team, at least temporarily. He suffered a fractured wrist on a scary fall early in the LSU game (although, in a measure of true hard-hat toughness, Jones continued to play the rest of the game). As he went up to catch a lob pass, Jones took contact to the face from the Tigers' Trendon Watford- not malicious or intentional, but enough to send Jones off-balance. It was not deemed sufficient to merit a whistle for a foul, a topic which Nate Oats probably discussed with the SEC office recently.

The vacancy Jones leaves on the defensive end was apparent almost as soon as Saturday's game against Arkansas began. He may be back soon - there was no official speculation from Alabama. Donta Hall had a similar operation last season and missed just one game, although he returned with a Samoan war club-looking cast on his hand. That was less of a hindrance to Hall's game, mainly shot-blocking and rebounding, than it would be for Jones, who needs more dexterity given his increasing role as a ball-handler.

The Alabama lineup has been a patchwork creation since before the season began. Two players who could have increased the Crimson Tide's physicality around the basket, James Rojas and Juwan Gary, went out with season-ending knee injuries. Furthermore, Jahvon Quinerly's transfer waiver was denied by the NCAA, not technically an injury unless you consider it a slap in the face of common sense. Now, with guard Beetle Bolden battling stomach issues that have kept

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The Tuscaloosa News

Sunday, February 2, 2020

him out for a week as well as Jones' injury, there are barely enough role players to fill all the roles.

There is no single cause for the bedeviling plague of injuries that has affected football and men's basketball since the 2019-2020 school year began. Jones was injured because he landed awkwardly after a long fall, not because of a voodoo curse that also affected Dylan Moses and Tua Tagovailoa and, for that matter, Claire Jenkins.

Jones can come back, presumably, and it may be in time for Alabama to muster a run at the post­season, like the one that 1990 basketball team made. But Jones' absence doesn't just affect the team's offense or defense, but also its heart.

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The Tuscaloosa News

Thursday, February 13, 2020

Record 3-point attempts not enough in Alabama

loss to Auburn

By: Cecil Hurt

AUBURN -By the time Alabama got started on Wednesday night, it seemed almost too far behind to matter.

Instead, it mattered.

The Crimson Tide erased a 16-point deficit and forced overtime, launching an SEC-record number of 3-pointers in the process, but No. 11 Auburn won its third straight overtime game and evened the season series with a 95-91 overtime win.

The Crimson Tide fell behind 16-0 after the first media timeout and erased all of that deficit, then overcame another 12-point deficit with under IO minutes to play, tying the game at 81-81 on a John Petty 3-pointer with 14.3 seconds to play.

Samir Dougherty triggered an 8-0 run to start overtime for the Tigers and while Alabama cut the lead down to two points, 93-91, with 23.9 seconds to go, the Crimson Tide tried to press and steal the ball in the backcourt but missed narrowly and fouled with 17 seconds left. Doughty made two free throws and Petty missed a final long 3-pointer, Alabama's 59th

"That's probably a few too many threes," Alabama coach Nate Oats said. "Not the 22 makes. I'll take all the makes I can get. But they dominated us on the boards (60-44) and the free throw difference (39-16) was significant. But if we aren't driving to the basket, we aren't going to get as many fouls.

"I was proud of the way we fought back but we've got to figure out how to stop runs. We knew they were going to be angry and it was going to be loud but we got outrebounded 11-1 before the first media timeout. Maybe I should have called a time out but at some point, they have to play through it and they did."

Auburn coach Bruce Pearl also noted the different styles of play in explaining the game's back-and-forth runs.

"It's hard to play them man-to-man because they are so small and we are so much bigger," Pearl said. "We had the advantage on the inside, they had it on the outside. They made 22 3-pointers, but they missed 37 and only made eight two's. That's a lot of misses and we rebounded a lot of them. Austin Wiley was a man inside. It was a memorable game."

Wiley had 18 points, 17 rebounds and five blocked shots for AU (22-2, 9-2 SEC.) Isaac Okoro, who pulled a hamstring late in regulation, had 19 points for the Tigers.

Jaden Shackelford led Alabama (13-11, 5-6 SEC) with 28 points. Kira Lewis had a triple-double with 10 points, 13 assists and 10 rebounds.

Herb Jones, playing less than two weeks after wrist surgery, saw 13 minutes of action. Alabama returns to SEC play on Saturday, hosting No. 25 LSU.

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The Birmingham News

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

How Nate Oats went 'beyond call of duty' to

learn from Nick Saban

By: Mike Rodak

Weeks before Alabama's men's basketball team convened in mid-September for its first practice of the season, new coach Nate Oats walked from his office in Coleman Coliseum across the parking lot to the Mal Moore athletic building.

It was 7:15 on an August morning, and Oats wanted to make sure he was not late for the start of a meeting -- a football team meeting.

When the clock struck 7:30, another jam-packed day of fall camp began for Nick Saban and his players. It would not end until 10 o'clock at night, and Oats was there from start to finish.

As a high basketball school coach in Michigan and a burgeoning college coach at Buffalo, Oats studied Saban's methods and tried to adopt them with his own teams.

Now, Oats had a chance to observe Saban up close and absorb whatever he could.

Saban, though, caught Oats off guard when he pulled the new coach on campus into his office during a dinnertime break amid an otherwise busy schedule of back-to-back meetings and practice.

"Do you have anything for us?" Oats recalled Saban asking.

Oats laughed.

"Are you asking me if I have anything to help you?" he said.

In the mind of Oats, 45, there was little advice he could provide a coach whom he believes is "one of the best in the history of team sports."

Yet there Oats was, sitting across from a six-time national champion, trying to think of what knowledge he could possibly bestow upon an inquiring Saban.

"I was like, first off, that's not why I'm here. I haven't even thought that way," Oats said last week. "Second, if I did, the answer would probably be no. Like, I'm here to learn from you. I don't really have any suggestions. I'm not at a place where I would give anything even if I had any.

"I thought it was ironic that he even asked. I think he is trying to learn. But, no, I will not be offering up suggestions to how they need to run their program. He is doing just fine with that. I'm a young coach trying to get a lot better."

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The Birmingham News

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

The Saban-Oats relationship is not like that of Saban and Bill Belichick, the New England Patriots coach who visits annually with his longtime friend in Tuscaloosa.

The latest meeting of two of the most successful football minds in history was captured last year for an HBO documentary titled, "The Art of Coaching." Those sorts of glimpses into the knowledge of championship coaches have long been red meat for Oats.

During his 11-year career coaching boys basketball at Romulus High School outside Detroit, Oats would provide his players with a quote of the day. Some came from Saban, who just a few years earlier had caught Oats' eye as Michigan State's coach.

When Oats was hired in 2013 as an assistant at the University at Buffalo and two years later became the Bulls' head coach, his daily practice plans became more high-tech.

In his Microsoft Excel spreadsheets was a drop-down menu to add his quotes. An entire section was devoted to wisdom from Saban. It came from news conferences, articles, podcasts, Y ouTube videos -- wherever Oats could find Saban's words.

"[We] just kind of tried to get our program in Buffalo to kind of emulate [the idea of] every day working, the process and we're not talking about winning championships, we're trying to win the day in every different way," Oats said. "I had never met him though until I got hired here. I just kind of followed him and admired him from afar."

Oats had a similar admiration for Michigan State basketball coach Tom Izzo and would visit East Lansing to observe his program.

Izzo, who became the Spartans' head coach the same year as Saban took over the football program, recommended Oats to Alabama before he was hired last March.

"[That] meant a lot to me, because my relationship with Tom Izzo would never be one that steered me wrong," Saban said this week.

Oats met Saban for the first time moments before his introductory news conference, but the two coaches did not have much time to spend together until they shared a plane to the SEC spring meetings in Florida last May.

Their relationship has grown since, with Saban mentoring Oats on a variety of topics.

"He doesn't text or email but you can get a hold of him," Oats said. "I had questions and he's given me solid advice on different stuff with the state of Alabama, the university, what would you do in this recruiting situation?"

When Oats' predecessor, Avery Johnson, was hired by Alabama in 2015, he visited a spring football practice and Saban invited the former NBA point guard to his pick-up basketball league.

Synergy between the football program and other sports, not just men's basketball, is what Saban has tried to achieve at Alabama.

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The Birmingham News

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

"I'm always really open to try to help all the coaches here, wherever I can," he said. "My philosophy here is we want to be good at everything here. I try to support all the other programs the best I can to help whatever way that I can so they can be."

Saban, though, has been impressed with Oats' proactive approach to learning, which included Oats asking if he could shadow the football team for a day.

"In his case he went beyond the call of duty when it came to trying to do more so that he could get acclimated to being in the Southeast Conference and see how somebody else does things," Saban said. "Most of the other coaches have never done that."

+++

Oats receives Saban's schedule of motivational speakers visiting campus and tries to listen to the guests when possible, including talks to the football team by college basketball analyst Jay Bilas and former NFL player Ray Rice.

Some of Oats' other trips across the parking lot involve his potential future players.

When Oats has a recruit on campus, he credits Saban for carving out time even in football season to give his pitch.

"He's so good," Oats said. "He's really talking to them about what it takes to be great. What we have here at Alabama that can help them get to their destination.

"I learn a lot listening to him. I'm like, shoot, that's a great point. I need to get better at this, that or the other [thing]."

Oats has also found Alabama football analyst Butch Jones, a former head coach at three different schools, to be a valuable resource given his experience. Strength and conditioning coach Scott Cochran and Oats have also struck up a friendship.

"Access to [Saban's] program in general has been great," Oats said. "[I can look] out my office window straight over to the football offices. I could walk to his office in a minute. For me not to take advantage of that, I would be a complete idiot. I'm going to take advantage of that as much as possible."

Oats has tried to glean as much from Saban as possible but ultimately wants to put his own stamp on the basketball program.

"Nobody can be [Saban]. He's his own guy. He's a machine. I'm not trying to be him," Oats said. "You've got to be your own person. I think you can pick and choose areas of his program that he's great at that you can implement parts of that just try to help make us better."

Oats' team has a 13-10 record this season, including a 5-5 mark in the SEC. An overtime win last Saturday at Georgia ended a three-game losing streak, but Alabama will be tested this week with a trip Wednesday to play No. 11 Auburn followed by hosting No. 25 LSU on Saturday.

Saban has observed the team closely.

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The Birmingham News Wednesday, February 12, 2020

"I think he's done a great job with limited resources this year with all the injuries he has and an ineligible player," Saban said. The NCAA ruled sophomore guard Jahvon Quinerly cannot play this season after transferring from Villanova, while Alabama lost forwards James Rojas and Juwan Gary to season-ending knee injuries before its first game.

Starting guard Herb Jones has not played since wrist surgery earlier this month but could return by next week, Oats said Tuesday.

"That's really hurt them," Saban said. "They're just playing with seven guys, basically."

Saban has been impressed with how Oats has coached the players available to him.

"The thing that I look at is the players are playing hard, they're really bought in," Saban said. "They've all improved as players. There's probably five games that they could have won, if they had a little more depth -- they ran out of gas at the end and can't finish. Their guys are playing a lot more minutes than the other team.

"I just think the guy has done a fantastic job."

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The Birmingham News

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

3-star Pleasant Grove WR Chris Lewis

impressed with Alabama visit

By: Josh Bean

The recruiting process has begun heating up for Pleasant Grove receiver Chris Lewis.

The 6-foot-3 rising senior who caught 20 touchdown passes last season has made junior day visits to Tennessee and Alabama and the came away extremely impressed from last weekend's visit to Tuscaloosa.

"It went pretty well. They showed me around the campus," Lewis said of his visit for Bama's first major junior day event of the 2021 recruiting cycle. "When we go up for games, we really tour the facilities. They took me around and showed me the head strength and conditioning coach - Coach (Scott) Cochran, I think- and he was pretty intense. He was showing us how he'd getus all jacked up and stuff.

"They showed us the trainers and (we met) Trey Sanders, and he talked about the process they did with him, how they got him back to 100 percent so fast," he added. "That was nice to know, because if you get injured, you want to get back to 100 percent fast."

Currently ranked as a 3-star prospect according to the 247Sports Composite rankings, Lewis' offer list has grown in recent weeks. He now holds offers from more than a dozen schools, including Texas A&M, Tennessee, Nebraska, Vanderbilt and Louisville.

Neither Alabama nor Auburn has extended an offer yet, but he said Alabama coaches indicated they want him to return for a summer camp. He said he's also also planning to visit Florida State in early March.

"They don't know how fast I am," Lewis said, "so they want me to come back to camp and run the 40 ..

Lewis went directly to the basketball court after helping Pleasant Grove finish runner-up in Class 5A last season. "Once basketball is done, I can focus on recruiting," he said.

Lewis caught 68 passes for 1,308 yards and 20 touchdowns, including two TD receptions in the state title game, after missing much of his sophomore season with a lacerated kidney.

"He's one of those kids you might have to tell at practice, 'All right, relax a little bit. Save some of that juice,"' Pleasant Grove coach Darrell LeBeaux told AL.com last season.

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The Tuscaloosa News

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Tua Tagovailoa has positive medical

evaluation

By: Cecil Hurt

Former University of Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, who was invited to the NFL Draft Combine last week, received a medical evaluation last weekend that his three-month CT scan was "as positive as possible" according to reporter Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network.

Tagovailoa had surgery last November after dislocating his hip and suffering a posterior wall fracture in the first half of Alabama's won over Mississippi State, an injury that eventually ended his college career. He told reporters at the Super Bowl earlier this month that he had been "close" to returning to Alabama but made the decision to enter the NFL Draft after consulting with his parents and doctors.

"The fracture has healed," per the NFL Network report. "The hip and its range of motion (are) good."

Tagovailoa indicated while at the Super Bowl in Miami that he did not expect to be cleared for football activities until March, a projection which remains the likely scenario per the report.

While Tagovailoa does not expect to do any football drills at the NFL combine, which will be held from Feb. 24 to March 1, he could still attend to visit with teams and have medical and routine psychological testing. He has said he hopes to perform at least one pro day workout for NFL teams - probably in Tuscaloosa - in either late March or early April.

The NFL Draft begins on April 23 in Las Vegas. If Tagovailoa is chosen in the first round, as many mock drafts project, he would be Alabama's first Round One quarterback selection since Richard Todd was the sixth overall pick by the New York Jets in the 1976 draft.

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The Tuscaloosa News

Friday, February 14, 2020

Alabama schedules spring football game for

April 18 By: Ken Roberts

The University of Alabama's spring football game has been set to kick off at 1 p.m. April 18 at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

UA said in a news release Thursday that construction at the stadium will limit capacity to around 30,000. Last year's game attracted a crowd of 62,219.

Seats will be limited to the east and south sides in the lower and upper bowls because of the construction.

When capacity is reached at Bryant-Denny Stadium, fans will be directed to Sewell-Thomas Stadium, where the game will be shown on the baseball stadium's video boards.

Admission will be free.

Other A-Day activities will include an alumni flag football game inside the stadium before the spring football game.

Captains of the 2019 team, Anfemee Jennings, Xavier McKinney, DeVonta Smith and Tua Tagovailoa, will leave prints of their hands and cleats in the concrete in the Walk of Fame Ceremony at Denny Chimes at around 11: 15 a.m."

After the spring football game, UA coach Nick Saban will present the spring awards to the team members at midfield.

Bryant-Denny Stadium is undergoing more than $100 million in improvements, which include more premium seats, bigger video boards and a host of other upgrades. Construction is expected to be finished in time for the 2020 home opener against Georgia State on Sept. 12.

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