This week’s Alabama baseball schedule has a pair of reunions for first-year coach Brad Bohannon. The Crimson Tide plays both Auburn and Kentucky this week, where Bohannon had spent the last 14 years as an assistant coach before coming to Tuscaloosa.
“I don’t want to downplay this; this is a tremendous opportunity for us to play a strong opponent and play at a great venue in front of seven or eight thousand people, so it’s an exciting night for us,” he said. “But that being said, we also have 30 league games and also have some strong nonconference opponents. I have a lot of strong relationships with coaches, support staff and some of those kids. So yeah, I would like to beat them a little bit more than a normal game.”
Bohannon was an assistant at Kentucky from 2004-15, then spent the last two seasons with Auburn. He’ll find plenty of familiar faces in the Tigers’ dugout when they meet on Tuesday at Montgomery’s Riverwalk.
Other players and staffers have connections that come into play this week as well. Junior outfielder Chandler Taylor is from Montgomery and will get to play near home on Tuesday.
“It’s good to play in front of a hometown crowd,” Taylor said. “High school friends, people I’ve known growing up who don’t get a chance to see me play on a regular basis. They have a chance one time a year to come see me play. But other than that, it’s just about beating Auburn. It’s just another game. Auburn is the next opponent. They happen to be ranked in the top 10, and it happens to be the school that our head coach came from, but none of that makes it any more than what it is.”
Auburn is 8-1 in the Capital City Classic and has won the last three games of the midweek series.
