TUSCALOOSA | The towel inspires.

It hangs on a wall in Dont'a Hightower's room.

It inspires the University of Alabama's junior in the best of times, like these. The Crimson Tide's inside linebacker is playing some of the best football of his career as the leading tackler on the nation's No.1 scoring defense.

It inspired during some of the tougher times, like the eight months of grueling rehabilitation it took to get back on the field from a serious knee injury in 2009.

And it's inspired in even tougher times than those.

As Vanderbilt visits Bryant-Denny Stadium tonight, it faces a linebacker in Hightower who is an elite defender athletically. But he is also one of superior intelligence, and plays with an undercurrent of personal motivation that few could match, and fewer could comprehend.

"Whatever he's done, he's always wanted to be the best," said his mother, L'Tanya Hightower. "He started setting goals for himself at a very young age."

Hightower grew up in a rural area in Lewisburg, Tenn., a short drive south of Nashville in sleepy Marshall County. The older child of a single mother of two, he built strong relationships with both immediate and extended family. Younger sister Quenette, who now is a freshman at nearby Columbia State Community College, was far from the least of those.

"She looks up to him and listens to him. Sometimes she listens to him more than she does her mama, and I have to say, 'Wait a minute, I'm the mama,'" L'Tanya said with a laugh.

Quenette's birthday is Nov. 5, the day Alabama plays LSU, and she's asked her brother for an Alabama win over the Tigers as her gift. She's come to believe, L'Tanya said, that Dont'a can deliver just about anything. So much does Quenette respect her older brother that she once turned down a prom date because Dont'a wasn't sold on her suitor.

Protective of his sibling, respectful of authority, and driven to succeed at every level of football - that's how Dont'a Hightower came of age.

In the Hightower family, Dont'a said, you either played sports or played with cars. He was one of the former, while his grandfather and father figure, John Hightower, was one of the latter.

John provided Dont'a with the nickname "Buck," and going to watch "Buck" play football at Marshall County High was one of John's great joys. When scholarship offers from all over the Southeastern Conference began to pour in, John helped him narrow things down. All the while, he took care not to spoil his grandson. That, Hightower said, was his grandmother's territory.

Dont'a, for his part, spent a lot of time with his grandfather in the garage, trying to learn what he could under the hood of an automobile.

Not much of it stuck.

"He would try to teach me what a carburetor is, what a radiator is, and I still don't know one from the other," Hightower said. "But we used to hang out in the shop a lot."

Over time, the two became hard to separate. In a sense, they still are.

"Dont'a thinks my dad hung the moon," L'Tanya said.

Dont'a Hightower is the best football player to come from Marshall County that just about anyone in Lewisburg can remember. By the time Don Thomas arrived to coach around Christmas of Hightower's junior year, the player had already made a name for himself as both a running back and a linebacker.

In his only season as Hightower's coach, Thomas was taken aback not only by his ability, but his character as well.

"When your star player is on task and on target, it's a lot easier to get everyone else to be on task and on target," Thomas said. "And Dont'a did everything we asked and more."

As for his exploits on the field, those were of the sort Thomas hadn't seen before or since. Hightower was primarily a linebacker under Thomas, but was occasionally used to spark the offense. According to Thomas, he touched the ball 77 times as a senior - either as a rusher, receiver or return man - and scored 19 touchdowns on those 77 touches. But it was at linebacker where Thomas knew he had something even more special.

"He's the only guy I've ever had to ask to not hit a blocker so hard," Thomas said. "One night, the other team was running a quarterback counter, and he was hitting the pull guy so hard the quarterback was just waiting for Dont'a to drive the blocker so far, that he'd run behind him. Once he stopped hitting the blocker so hard, he ended that play for them for the rest of the game."

Today, in an area where Tennessee fans are of course in the majority, local support for Hightower has swelled the presence of Alabama fans. Marshall County Athletic Director Kevin McGehee said Alabama gear was all over the school recently when students were permitted to wear their favorite team colors.

"There are a lot of Alabama No. 30 jerseys walking around Lewisburg," said McGehee. "And Dont'a hasn't forgotten where he came from."

As the first-year coach at Vanderbilt, James Franklin wouldn't even know it. But he nearly brought Hightower to Tuscaloosa this weekend wearing black and gold.

That's right - the 2007 Class 3A Mr. Football in the state of Tennessee would have been a Commodore if he hadn't signed with Alabama.

The Crimson Tide and Vanderbilt don't exactly cross paths often as recruiting adversaries, but for Hightower's signature, they were the only fighters really in the ring.

"When they came in and talked to me, it sort of woke me up about what I could have," Hightower said. "In high school, I was real hard on my academics, so having Vanderbilt offer me a scholarship meant a lot."

Indeed, Hightower attended nearly every Vandy home game over his last two years at Marshall County High. He had friends who had gotten scholarships to Vandy, and a mother whose emphasis on academics was unwavering.

"He's got so much of his family values in him, it was not a shock to me when Vanderbilt was in it for him," said Thomas. "He always kept up with his studies. Not a shock at all."

The towel still inspires.

It hangs on that wall in Dont'a Hightower's room.

It was made by his family and given to him after John Hightower died of pneumonia in June 2008. Earlier that month, John had helped "Buck" move into his dorm room at Bryant Hall, and had already made plans to see his first collegiate game in Atlanta against Clemson to open his freshman season.

"It was real hard. We always talked about, when I left, him watching me in my first game," Hightower said. "He wasn't here, but he was here in spirit. That was probably one of the toughest things I ever had to get over."

There is a football, a helmet and a picture of a sunset on the towel, and UA coach Nick Saban allowed Hightower to wear it during the Clemson game in honor of John Hightower. He recovered a fumble in that first game, and has been a centerpiece of UA's defense ever since.

After that 34-10 win over Clemson, Hightower hung the towel for personal display.

The inscription reads: "Even though the sun sets, I will always ride the Tide with you."

Wherever Hightower goes from Alabama, either with the degree he'll earn in December or with the gift to play in the National Football League, the towel will go with him.

"I miss him each and every day," Hightower said, "and I'm doing it for him."