[Mobile Register] One Game Turns Tide Season

[TideHead]

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Thomas Murphy makes it sound like this one game cost us the chance of hosting. While we would have won the West with the win thanks to the tiebreakers, I can't believe that we would have gone from playing at the #1 national seed to hosting if this one game had been different. We probably would have had to have made a run in Hoover to have played our way into hosting.

Link: One Game Turns Tide Season

	Quote:
	One game. Perhaps that was all that separated the Alabama baseball team from being alive and battling in an NCAA Super Regional today instead of having its season come to a soggy end at No. 1-ranked Tulane last weekend. That one game could have been on the opening night of the Arkansas series. Remember Clint Arnold's two-strike, two-out bloop of a hit off Tide relief ace David Robertson in the ninth inning? It was the flare that kicked up chalk down the right-field line, spun away from Morrow Thomley in the corner and plated two Razorback runs to cap a stirring comeback. Win that game and the Crimson Tide ties for the SEC West crown, wins the tiebreakers and earns the No. 1 seed for the conference tournament. In the process it probably solidifies an NCAA Regional berth at Sewell-Thomas Stadium for Alabama. Lose it and, well, you know the rest.

[pcfixup]

Was probably that Scott could not sustain that April tear through May, and Large went into a pitching slump. We had very little offense after Scott's slump (until the Aub series, and I think their pitching fell apart) Most of our losses were one or two run games in which we scored less than five runs. I would point to the Sunday Arkansas game more than the Friday one. Our pitching did the job there, but we could only get two runs.

[JoJoforHeisman]

Once Gabe started to slip a little after that April tear, for whatever reason, Evan started to struggle even worse. When your top run producers are struggling at the same time, it's difficult to overcome that void in the heart of the order. Over the final 20-game stretch, Gabe hit .265 (17-62). Evan hit just .164 (11-67), but strangely enough, of those eleven hits, five were homeruns and three were doubles, the only singles coming against UAB. Zac Welch, on the other hand, hit a solid .368 (25-68) over the same span, recording a hit in 16 of the final 20 games. Yet for some reason, in the Auburn series, Zac ends up hitting eighth and seventh. Maybe some lineup shuffling would have benefited Evan and Gabe at that time, allowing Zac to hit between them (or at least higher than the usual sixth slot). When this move was finally made, in Game 1 of the regional, Evan hit two bombs and Zac hit one, both part of 2-for-4 nights at the plate. The next day, against Tulane (and likely as a result of facing the lefty Bogusevic), the lineup is switched back, moving Evan back to cleanup and dropping Zac to fifth. The same lineup was used against ULL's lefty starter in the third game, and the two combined to go 1-for-13 in those games. In the season finale against Tulane, facing righthander Micah Owings, Zac went back to cleanup and promptly goes 4-for-4. Sometimes, especially at the college level, you just have to throw the righty-lefty matchup out the window and go with what's working. Instead of sticking with the lineup that resulted in three homeruns the night before, we turn around the next day and tinker with it all because of the overrated emphasis on righty-lefty. What this has to do with the above post, I have no idea, but I've typed all of this up, so I might as well post it.