South Alabama Sports

    AUBURN, Ala. — The basket seemed about as tiny as a shot glass to Auburn Saturday night against Kentucky but the rear exit of Neville Arena and a loathsome invitation to the NIT (The Nobodies Invitational Tournament) was about to be kicked wide open. The Tigers missed 14 three-pointers and 17 layups and were perilously close to falling down the stairs and missing the NCAA tournament, a minimum requirement for any Auburn coach, even if Steven Pearl hasn’t…

  By JIMMY WIGFIELD Former UMS-Wright coach Terry Curtis is recuperating at home from open-heart surgery after an 11-day hospital stay, most of it in intensive care. Curtis, 75, experienced trouble with his defibrillator on Feb. 9 and was immediately seen by his doctor, who performed a cardiac catheterization that revealed a blockage which was removed the next day. Scar tissue from a serious heart attack nearly 40 years ago was also discovered and ablations were performed to form precise…

        TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Alabama’s Labaron Philon turned a lecture into rapture, a command to change his ways into a command performance. Nate Oats turned jeers into rhapsodical cheers reverberating off the hangar-style ceiling of Coleman Coliseum, where, at the end of Wednesday night’s double-overtime jousting with Arkansas, nobody could have heard a 767 at full throttle taking off. It’s just as well, since the airspace had been cleared for a three-pointer from a three-foot runway in…

    AUBURN, Ala. — In the aftermath of a third straight SEC loss Tuesday night, Auburn coach Steven Pearl repeatedly pressed his left index finger to his temple as he performed a painful self-examination. “People are going to be panicking right now,” he predicted after the Tigers led for only 20 seconds in an 84-76 loss to No. 19 Vanderbilt at Neville Arena, the Commodores’ first win on the Plains in a decade. But Pearl said he won’t be…

          AUBURN, Ala. — Alabama’s 96-92 victory over Auburn on Saturday after it had been shoved to the precipice of a humiliating defeat, then refused to be packed up and sent back to Tuscaloosa in a sausage casing, might be a turning point for the Crimson Tide. Or it might be merely a gratifying few hours in which it defoliated the rowdy Jungle for the second straight year and cast its spine before the Pearls. The…

      By JIMMY WIGFIELD MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The Class 6A football playoffs will expand to 24 teams this year and the Super 7 in Mobile will be conducted over five days in December, the Alabama High School Athletic Association’s Central Board voted on Friday. The Super 7 — which will be played in Mobile at Hancock Whitney Stadium for the first time this year —  has always been played over three days. The five-day pilot program was brought…

    MONTGOMERY, Ala. — When lifetime achievement awards are bestowed on coaches, there is a tendency to think they can do nothing more to make their profession and their sport better. Terry Curtis did not feel a door closing behind him Saturday upon receiving such a commendation, although his emotions leaked out when his life flashed before his eyes in a video presentation that included everything from a brown-haired Curtis wearing a Shaw T-shirt when he first became a…

    ____________________ “I am not trying to outsmart the other coach so much as outsmart his kids. As a coach, you may see what they’re fixing to do but you ain’t got time to tell those 11 kids in those five seconds.” Danny Powell _______________________________     By JIMMY WIGFIELD MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Danny Powell is an extremely complex man and coach who always preferred to appear that he was as uncomplicated as a sundial, except he worked best…