Things to watch this week in the Big 12 Conference:
Cincinnati (4-0, 1-0 Big 12) at Arizona (3-1, 0-1), Saturday, 11 p.m. ET (Fox)
The Bearcats have gone from a five-game losing streak to finish last season to a chance to start 5-0 for the first time since 2021, when while still in the American they became the only non-major conference team to make the four-team version of the College Football Playoff.
Cincinnati's Big 12 road opener comes a week after rallying to win 31-26 against previously unbeaten Kansas State. Cole Tabb ran for three touchdowns after halftime.
Arizona won 30-24 last year at then-No. 22 Cincinnati, their only previous meeting. Noah Fifita threw for 294 yards and a touchdown to become the Wildcats' career leader for TD passes last November. That was the second of the Bearcats' five losses in a row.
Fifita's 11 TD passes this season match the league high. His 84 career TDs are the most among active FBS quarterbacks, and his 10,314 yards passing rank second. Since a 28-17 loss at No. 10 BYU, the Wildcats have come back from early deficits of 10-0 to Northern Illinois and 14-0 at Washington State to win both games by double digits.
Baylor (3-1, 1-0) at Arizona State (2-1, 1-0), Saturday, 10:30 p.m. ET (ESPN)
A three-game winning streak by the Bears has pushed embattled seventh-year coach Dave Aranda's overall record to 39-38. Those came since they failed on a 2-point conversion attempt with 9 seconds left in a 17-16 loss to Auburn.
Arizona State is coming off an open date. The Sun Devils won 27-24 in Waco last year when their fourth field goal was a 43-yarder on the game's final play. They have a different kicker and a new starting quarterback: Cutter Boley, who has nine TDs passing and one rushing.
— Houston quarterback Conner Weigman threw four TDs and ran for two in a win last week at Georgia Southern. The No. 20 Cougars (3-1, 0-1) host UCF (3-1, 1-0) in their Big 12 home opener. Weigman has thrown for 947 yards with 11 TDs and one interception.
— West Virginia running back Cam Cook, a transfer from Jacksonville State who also played at TCU, has an FBS-high 99 rushing attempts and is the Big 12 leader at 127.5 yards rushing per game. The Mountaineers (3-1, 0-1) go to Iowa State (2-2, 0-1). The Cyclones' 21-game streak with at least 100 yards rushing is the longest by a Power Four team, but they are 15th in the Big 12 allowing 144.3 yards per game on the ground.
TCU (2-2, 0-1) tries to avoid being 0-2 in Big 12 play for the first time since 2013. The Horned Frogs host No. 10 BYU (3-0, 1-0), the first top 10 team to visit Fort Worth since No. 7 Texas won 29-26 there in 2023. ... Fifth-year Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire (39-18) can become the first coach in school history to reach 40 wins in 58 games or fewer. The No. 12 Red Raiders (4-0, 1-0) are at Colorado (2-2, 0-1). ... Kansas (1-2), 23-22 against non-conference opponents since 2012, hosts C-USA team Middle Tennessee (2-2). ... No. 13 Utah (4-0, 1-0), No. 19 Oklahoma State (3-1, 1-0) and Kansas State (3-1, 0-1) have open dates.
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West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez celebrates after defeating Virginia in an NCAA college football game Saturday, Sept. 19, 2026, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Scott Kinser)
Houston quarterback Conner Weigman (1) celebrates his touchdown against Georgia Southern in the first half of an NCAA football game, Saturday, Sept. 26, 2026, in Statesboro, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee officials were unable to put Christa Gail Pike to death Wednesday for a 1995 murder after administering two doses of a lethal drug. A death penalty expert said it was an unprecedented failure, and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee halted the one remaining execution for the rest of the year.
Pike, 50, was alive and loudly snoring after the attempted lethal injection and taken by ambulance from the prison, her attorneys said. She was being treated at a hospital, but they said they hadn’t been told about her condition.
She had been scheduled for execution at 10 a.m. Wednesday for the killing she committed at age 18 and would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. An appeals court stopped the lethal injection just an hour before it was to start and hours later the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that stay.
Officials gave Pike two doses of pentobarbital, her attorneys said in court filings late Wednesday.
Gov. Bill Lee said in a statement that he has ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred” and that the remaining scheduled execution will not take place this year.
“Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective,” he said.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said in a statement that they “followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office.”
The state's execution protocol calls for a secondary set of drug syringes to be administered “if the inmate is not deceased” after the first set. It does not spell out what happens if the subject is alive after the second set.
Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said what Pike experienced is “singular and unparalleled.”
Seven other people have survived medical problems due to an execution team's failure to access a vein to administer lethal injection drugs, but no one has stayed alive after receiving the drugs used in such executions, she said.
Media witnesses observing from a separate room said officials raised curtains to the execution chamber at 7:27 p.m., showing Pike strapped to a gurney.
“I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that is in love,” she said in her “last” words. She described herself as at peace.
But Pike remained awake and at one point raised her head and asked prison officials if her arm was supposed to feel that way. It was not clear what she was referencing.
By 8:26 p.m., execution witnesses reported that the second dose of pentobarbital had been administered.
Pike continued to be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at 8:53 p.m. At that time there was an announcement to escort media witnesses out of the area.
Lawyers for Pike filed an emergency motion late Wednesday to the Tennessee Supreme Court seeking to immediately halt and stay the execution, saying she was in “unnecessary agony” and it was violating her right to be executed free of cruel and unusual punishment. They also filed motions in the Sixth Circuit court and a district court.
It was the second time this year that Tennessee has been unable to carry out an execution: In May state officials called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after executioners tried and failed for over an hour to place an IV to administer pentobarbital.
Pike and her boyfriend were convicted of the fatal stabbing and beating in 1995 of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville. The case garnered widespread attention in part because of a pentagram that was carved on Slemmer’s body, and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.
Pike was initially scheduled to be put to death in the morning, and witnesses had gathered at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to issue a stay. That court said a delay was needed to consider whether Pike’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered at her sentencing.
The attorney general’s office appealed to the Supreme Court, saying that halting the execution at the last moment traumatized Slemmer’s family and rewarded “abusive delay tactics” by Pike’s attorneys.
Later in the day, the high court cleared the way for the execution to proceed. The conservative majority did not explain their order, while the three liberal members signed a dissent that said Pike’s claims deserved a closer look.
Pike did not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argued that the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and her allegations of severe sexual abuse.
As the execution date drew near, debate renewed over the death penalty for young offenders.
Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s death sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds in Tennessee have had such sentences vacated.
After the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she said she only wanted to fight Slemmer but killed her in a frenzied attack when she couldn’t “put the brakes on.”
“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done,” Pike said in a statement.
Slemmer’s mother had traveled to Nashville in the hopes of witnessing the execution of her daughter’s killer. She told The Associated Press on Saturday that she had waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.
“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” May Martinez told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Saturday.
Martinez could not be immediately reached by telephone for comment after the execution was halted.
The killing rocked the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike, fearing Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on Jan. 12, 1995. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, has admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satan, into her body.
Shipp was 17 when the crime happened and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.
Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been put to death, representing about 1% of all executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Pike would have been the 30th person executed in the U.S. this year after Florida carried out an execution on Tuesday.
Tennessee announced in 2024 that it was switching from a three-drug series for lethal injections to the single drug pentobarbital. That came more than two years after the state abruptly halted the execution of Oscar Smith and acknowledged that it had failed to ensure its lethal injection drugs were tested properly.
This story has been updated to correct that Pike had been scheduled for execution at 10 a.m. local time, not 11 a.m. and that the lawyers filed an emergency motion to the Tennessee Supreme Court, not U.S.
Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, Ed White in Detroit, Hallie Golden in Seattle and Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City contributed.
Emergency vehicles arrive at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution after the execution of Christa Pike was halted Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
May Martinez, left, mother of murder victim Colleen Slemmer, walks out of Riverbend Maximum Security Institution during a stay of the planned execution of Christa Pike, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Leslie Brown, right, stands with others in the area reserved for people in favor to the death penalty outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the planned execution of Christa Pike, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Kathleen Walter prays in the area reserved for people opposed to the death penalty outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the planned execution of Christa Pike, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Abraham Bonowitz speaks during a March 4 Mercy protest against the death penalty at the Tennessee State Capitol, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. ahead of the Sept. 30th scheduled execution of Christa Pike. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Alonzo Hughes participates in a March 4 Mercy protest against the death penalty at the Tennessee State Capitol, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. ahead of the Sept. 30th scheduled execution of Christa Pike. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
In this image from video provided by WBIR-TV, Christa Pike cries after being sentenced to death on March 30, 1996 in Knoxville, Tenn. (WBIR-TV via AP)
This photo provided by the Tennessee Department of Correction shows Christa Pike on Jan. 12, 2023. (TDOC via AP)
