Happy Monday, everyone. The calendar has officially turned to November, which signals the start of basketball season. New women’s coach Pauline Love opens her inaugural season tonight at Coleman.
Alabama women’s basketball is starting its 2026-27 season with a home matchup with Queens.
The Crimson Tide saw Kristy Curry leave after 14 seasons for USF and hired Pauline Love to replace her. Love was at Oklahoma as an associate head coach. She was previously at Alabama as an assistant and recruiting coordinator
from 2024-25.
The Crimson Tide returned four players from last year’s team headlined by Ace Austin and Naomi Jones. Love and her staff brought in nine new faces. So far the Crimson Tide has won both its exhibitions ahead of starting the season.
Tip-off is 6pm, and you can catch the game streaming on SEC Network+ via the ESPN app.
Of course, there is a little football game going down in Baton Rouge on Saturday afternoon. You have undoubtedly watched Lane Kiffin’s Bayou Bengals a time or two this season, but Matt Stahl has a primer for you just the same.
For the first two weeks of the 2026 season, LSU looked like a world-beater. The Tigers took down Clemson 51-10 to open the season, then blew out Louisiana Tech 45-14.
But in one of the most anticipated games of the year, Kiffin and company couldn’t get the job done. LSU went to Oxford, a place only too happy to torment its former coach, and lost 32-24 to Pete Golding’s Rebels.
For the next two weeks, the Tigers got back on track, with wins over Texas A&M and McNeese. Then, a second loss came in the form of an upstart Kentucky team, which beat LSU 35-34 in overtime in Baton Rouge.
SInce then, LSU has beaten Mississippi State and Auburn. The Tigers were idle last week as well, giving them equal time to prepare for Alabama.
Another loss could knock LSU out of playoff contention. That would be a blow for Kiffin, who faced sky-high expectations upon arrival in Baton Rouge.
Colin Gay has a report card for you. The secondary needs to get its act together and be the outstanding unit that it was deemed to be.
Safeties: C+
Bray Hubbard has been consistent, doing a little bit of everything from the defensive backfield to the box. Keon Sabb has an underwhelming stat line while Ivan Taylor has emerged as a ball hawk in limited reps. Safeties have been at the center of some of Alabama’s biggest lapses in 2026, but have been otherwise, really, non-existent.
Cornerbacks: C
The Alabama cornerback room rides the roller coaster of Dijon Lee Jr., who has struggled at times in coverage and with penalties, while still finding himself in big moments with two interception returns for touchdowns. Zabien Brown continues to be one of the top defensive backs, one that is not targeted as much. And Red Morgan has his struggles in coverage, but is a ferocious tackler.
Taylor has indeed been cutting into Sabb’s snaps. We are still waiting to see more of Jireh Edwards, who generated a ton of camp buzz and then seemed to have a breakout in Lexington way back in week two. Jorden Edmonds had plenty of buzz himself, and it sure seems that both the cornerbacks and safeties would benefit from someone taking Lee’s job outside and kicking him back to dime.
LSU QB Sam Leavitt has completed only 20% of his passes of 20+ air yards. He has made his living in the intermediate area with a 70% completion, but that’s a dangerous way to live as evidenced by his SEC-high eight interceptions. The good news is that Alabama’s defensive backfield has been opportunistic, tied for the SEC lead with 12 picks. The bad news is that they have also busted too many coverages and tackling has been inconsistent after the catch.
If the secondary has its best day on Saturday, the Tide should have a great chance to win. It would certainly help to get some injured players back as well.
Eddie Timanus of USA Today has some overreactions from the bye weekend.
Buckeyes’ coach Ryan Day is correct that his team’s loss at Southern California can’t entirely be laid at the feet of freshman QB Luke Fahey, who was making his first career start in a difficult situation. Unfortunately, the committee’s job going forward is to evaluate the team as currently configured. The Buckeyes have the win at Indiana in the bank, but Ohio State must demonstrate it can still compete with teams on that high level with their new signal caller.
The good news for Ohio State is there aren’t many teams remaining on their Big Ten schedule with productive offenses. Next week’s opponent, Oregon, has shown flashes but not much consistency since the Ducks’ own backup QB Dylan Raiola was pressed into service. If the Buckeyes can get their own defensive issues buttoned up and fix their penalty problems on both sides of the ball, they still have a good chance to get to 10-2, which could them in the Big Ten title game and in theory keep them among the top 12. One more loss, however, and things get incredibly dicey.
USC beating Ohio State will also quiet any speculation of a connection between USC and DeBoer, who worked with their AD while at Washington.
As Bill Connelly notes, the SOS debate will be front and center as the CFP committee releases its first rankings of the season tomorrow. Advanced metrics generally love the SEC teams, but that pesky win-loss column tends to carry the day.
If the strength-of-schedule lobbying was effective, I could see each of the SEC’s six 6-2 teams ranking at least one spot higher. If I were personally ranking them, however, I would have them all a couple of spots lower because I think punishing teams with better records for the fact that they weren’t invited into the SEC is pretty ridiculous. The SEC isn’t entitled to playoff spots simply because its teams elected to make more money by adding a ninth conference game. But these computer averages definitely give us a reminder that their schedule strength is pretty stout.
We’ll see what the committee says Tuesday.
Last, SEC Shorts got in on the politicking.
Interesting that Alabama’s didn’t mention the win at Kentucky, which is the Tide’s key resume bullet.
How 2026 is that sentence?
That’s about it for today. Have a great week.
Roll Tide.
