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But perhaps the most memorable moments from the game, at least for the true Bama die-hards, came once the contest was well out of reach in favor of the Tide as the final seconds ticked away.

Sophomore guard Kai Spears made headlines already this week, with Bama Central first to report that Oats had awarded a scholarship to the 6’2″ walk-on from Pittsburgh.

“Kai has worked hard for this, and we’re so happy for him,” UA Director of Athletics Greg Byrne told Patch. “Being told you’ve earned a scholarship has got to be one of the greatest feelings as a student-athlete. Last night, he was able to get in the game late and took advantage of that time, scoring five points in the win. Hearing the crowd cheer for him and seeing his teammates carry him off the court made for a special ending to an already memorable week.”

Standing maybe an inch taller than the author of this column — who outweighs the sophomore guard by at least 40 pounds — Spears looks like your normal lanky college student and, in street clothes, could easily blend into any crowd.

The son of Marshall University’s athletic director, Spears, by all accounts, is a good kid who does all that’s asked of him and has never been in any kind of trouble.

“I know firsthand what it means for a preferred walk-on to earn an athletic scholarship,” Marshall AD Christian Spears told Patch. “Seeing your own son do that makes for an incredibly memorable moment. As parents, I think we all share this belief with our kids, if you work hard for something and you believe in yourself and listen to those who want to help you, great things can happen. Kai works tremendously hard, he believes in himself and his teammates and coaches. He soaks up knowledge and listens to others who he knows care about him and his future. Those things all aligned at Alabama and it all came together in the last 96 hours.

“Super happy for him,” Oats added during his press conference Thursday. “He’s a great kid. He works really hard. … Anytime we have a scholarship available, and we have a great walk-on that’s doing what he’s supposed to, we’re going to reward him with it.”

If that notoriety wasn’t enough, though, Spears made sure to capitalize on his recently elevated status during his very first game as a scholarship player.

Spears made it on the floor for the last minute and two seconds of Saturday’s win over Mississippi State and made the most of those 62 seconds, first drawing a foul and heading to the free throw line.

As if written in a movie script, he sunk both shots from the charity stripe and fans in the stands and those watching from home went nuts.

The dark-haired, wiry kid from the Steel City wasn’t finished, though.

With 15 seconds left on the clock, walk-on Max Scharnowski logged his only assist of the night when he passed the ball to a wide-open Spears standing behind the three-point line. In his only field goal attempt of the evening, Spears lobbed up a rainbow shot that hung in the air for an eternity before it ripped bottom.

When the shot snapped the net, the crowd inside Coleman Coliseum erupted into one of the loudest frenzies of the evening as Spears became just the latest former walk-on to prove their worth once given a chance —joining names like Scottie Pippen, Ben Wallace, J.J. Watt, Baker Mayfield and a menagerie of others.

“He’s worked his tail off and deserves it,” Oats told Patch on Sunday. “He shows up every day and we know he’s gonna work hard and do a great job.”

Just the sports side of this story is inspirational, sure. But the odyssey Kai Spears has endured becomes even more profound and fascinating when taking stock of the adversity he’s faced over the last year.

I’ve reported at length about the fatal shooting on Jan. 15, 2023, on Grace Street that left a young Birmingham mother dead. In the immediate aftermath, Maryland native Michael Lynn Davis and former Alabama basketball player Darius Miles were charged with capital murder in the death of 23-year-old Jamea Harris.

The news also evolved from national to international attention when the name Brandon Miller — the eventual No. 2 overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft — was mentioned in the earliest court proceedings for Davis and Miles.

Nevertheless, there were more victims yet to be made.

Indeed, the New York Times on March 15 dropped a bombshell story claiming Spears was in Miller’s car at the time of the shooting. As Patch previously reported, Miller’s car was struck at least twice by gunfire during the shooting.

The New York Times story’s claims were almost immediately refuted by Spears, his family and the UA Athletic Department, with Spears ultimately suing the newspaper for defamation.

As Patch previously reported, the initial 22-page civil lawsuit was filed last May in the Northern District Court of Alabama’s Western Division by West Virginia attorney Steve New and Tuscaloosa’s Matt Glover.

New told Patch on Sunday that the case is moving into its discovery phase where witnesses will be questioned under oath and certain documents turned over. He also reflected on the public pressure placed on his client as the 2023 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament began.

“It would’ve been easy to give up or move to another school,” New said. “Kai loves Alabama and his heart is what everyone sees. Kai continues to work hard and the results are evident. Matt Glover and I are looking forward to presenting Kai’s case.”

While the New York Times initially doubled down on its reporting, additional details surfaced — primarily in court filings — that confirmed it was a student manager in the vehicle with Miller at the time of the shooting and not Spears.

Like Miller, the student manager was never mentioned as a suspect in the case.

Tuscaloosa Patch has opted against publishing the name of the student manager, but it’s worth noting that sources confirm the manager named in the court proceedings is roughly the same height as Spears and both are clean-shaven with thick black hair. So, it would be easy for an eyewitness source to mistake an identity from an eyeshot distance.

“The original version of this article, published March 15, misidentified the person who was in the car with Brandon Miller when the shooting occurred,” the newspaper wrote in an editor’s note on the original story. “Based on information from a person familiar with the case, the article erroneously identified that person as Kai Spears, a freshman basketball player. After the article was initially published, Alabama’s athletic director and Spears’s father denied that Spears was present. The Times included those responses and reviewed its reporting, but did not conclude that any other change to the article was warranted at that time.”

Spears was far from the only victim in this case, sure. And the argument can be made, despite the ongoing legal battle with the New York Times, that Spears did not necessarily overcome anything more than his teammates were faced with over the last year.

After all, Spears isn’t sitting in the Tuscaloosa County Jail without bond awaiting trial and there was a noticeable exodus of talent like Jahvon Quinerly and Jaden Bradley, who was a witness in the case. And never mind Jaden Quinerly — Jahvon’s younger brother — left the program after his name came up in the early phases of the legal battle.

One could conversely argue that Spears was the only Tide basketball player apart from Miles and Miller under the direct microscope of the New York Times and its ham-fisted, parachute approach to covering events at the local level.

As I’ve seen multiple times in my career across numerous states, national reporters will often drop in to cover a local story, only to leave more chaos in their wake for us local reporters to clean up.

And when one of the most awesome, powerful news outlets in all of this schizophrenic, Godless world levels their editorial barrels at a 19-year-old walk-on basketball player, the odds for the student-athlete don’t seem very good. Right?

Just with that in mind, everyone would have likely been pretty understanding had Spears folded the tent and moved on via the transfer portal.

Against the odds and with much of the world breathing down his neck, Spears stuck with it and refused to wallow in the negative exposure unduly placed on his shoulders.

In an overly connected age where it’s a common, knee-jerk response for high-profile athletes to vent their frustrations on social media, Spears has taken the high road and said very little of the controversy, wisely choosing to speak through his legal counsel instead of offering up his unfiltered opinions to the unwashed masses.

No, the approach displayed by Spears off the court very much mirrors his style of play on it — cool, unassuming and focused, just waiting for his moment.

Spears found on Saturday night what is likely the first of many of those moments to come.

But the character he has displayed up to this point, in the face of grossly unwarranted attention, should not be ignored.

We in the media so easily forget that student-athletes like Spears, who is only 19, are still very much kids, yet we so often trade those basic values for clicks.

Then someone like Kai Spears comes along and proves all of us wrong at every turn.

Ryan Phillips is an award-winning journalist, editor and opinion columnist. He is also the founder and field editor of Tuscaloosa Patch. The opinions expressed in this column are in no way a reflection of our parent company or sponsors. Email news tips to ryan.phillips@patch.com.

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