South Alabama Sports

        By JIMMY WIGFIELD SEMMES — After six depressing months in which it seemed the brakes had been pressed on the progress Mary G. Montgomery’s football team had made in the last four years, the Vikings mashed the accelerator once again on Thursday night. Unveiling perhaps the most inexperienced team MGM has had in those four years, the Vikings ran over Ocean Springs 43-20 in the spring game and demonstrated they were unfazed by the week’s tumultuous…

        AUBURN — On a day when Auburn’s starting quarterback looked like the backup and the backup looked like the starter, the 34,000 fans gathered for Saturday’s A-Day game at Jordan-Hare Stadium needed something or someone inspiring to latch onto after years of disillusionment. Former Saraland star receiver Deshawn Spencer may have become future Auburn star receiver Deshawn Spencer, who was that something and someone. The true freshman caught nine passes on 10 targets for 93 yards…

            TUSCALOOSA — In its first formal appearance before the public since being emasculated by Indiana in the Rose Bowl, Alabama gave no clues that it could be a great football team based on what transpired in Saturday’s A-Day game. But, after all, it was A-Day, and a spring practice game can often be a mirage and does not determine who wins the national championship, not unless a star player gets hurt. The running game…

  By ARTHUR L. MACK IRVINGTON — No. 1-ranked Class 5A St. Paul’s used a six-run seventh inning to surge to a 10-1 win over Alma Bryant Tuesday night and make the Saints’ Andy Robbins the state’s all-time winningest baseball coach with his 1,218th career coaching victory. Tuesday’s win put Robbins ahead of late Hartselle legend William Booth, who had 1,217 wins, according to ahsfhs.com. Robbins — who has coached 46 years, 40 at St. Paul’s — was unaware of…

      TUSCALOOSA — Alabama experienced a nearly perfect expression of nirvana Saturday night, performing a thorough colonoscopy of Auburn for the first 25 minutes before the anesthesia wore off and hearing its fans pile upon Tigers coach Steven Pearl with taunts of “nepo baby” for the favor (favor?) his father did by ensuring he got the job. Thanks, dad, for the special treatment, something that might backfire miserably on both. Auburn is now in a surreal place: A…

      By JIMMY WIGFIELD Saraland’s Jamison Roberts committed on Saturday to Oklahoma, whose lineage of great quarterbacks was a major factor in his decision. Roberts (6-3, 205) — who has developed into a four-star prospect and is rated as the No. 1 quarterback in the state by Rivals and No. 21 nationally by 247 Sports — was sought by numerous elite national programs and announced his commitment during Future Freaks weekend in Norman, Okla. “I felt like it…

          By JIMMY WIGFIELD BIRMINGHAM — There are fantasies, there are dreams and there is reality. The fantasy, as it turned out, was the thought of a competitive state championship game between No. 1-ranked Saint James and No. 8 Mobile Christian on Friday, a notion that was quickly dispelled when Natalie Barton threaded a pair of 3-pointers on the Trojans’ first two possessions as easily as flipping on a light switch. “Once we stepped out on…

        By JIMMY WIGFIELD BIRMINGHAM — Alma Bryant’s girls knew they’d have to stick a lot of harpoons into the whale known as Hoover basketball to have any chance of sinking the best team in the state Thursday. The No. 8-ranked Hurricanes didn’t throw enough of them and the ones that got through were flung off by the dynastic Buccaneers with barely a blink in a 92-47 win in the Class 7A state tournament semifinals at Legacy…