Alabama baseball finished a midweek sweep of North Alabama with a 4-1 win on Wednesday night. The Crimson Tide quietly took an early 1-0 lead, then held on to beat the Lions.
It wasn’t the flashiest win of the season for Alabama (7-2). But it gave coach Brad Bohannon another chance to work several players in before conference play begins.
“I was really glad to get the win tonight,” Bohannon said. “Certainly, we weren’t as sharp as we have been at times this year. Unfortunately, it’s to be expected when you have a lot of youth and inexperience. I’m certainly glad to get a win when we didn’t necessarily play our best and learn a good lesson, that we have to play better if we want to have a successful weekend this weekend.”
Alabama had just seven hits and had two errors, tied for the most so far this season. The offense did finish with eight walks.
UA took a 1-0 lead in the third inning on a bases-loaded walk to Morgan McCullough, but stranded the bases loaded. North Alabama briefly tied the game 1-1 in the top of the fifth before Alabama scored two more runs to take the lead for good. McCullough had another RBI in the fifth inning, finishing 2 for 3 with two RBIs and two walks to lead the offense.
McCullough started at shortstop for the first time this season after playing second base earlier. Junior John Trousdale got his first career start at second base.
“I feel like I’ve been doing pretty well,” McCullough said. “Obviously it’s early, so I try to build on every game. As a team, I think we’re just trying to get better game by game. I’m really excited about this weekend and the challenges ahead.”
Alabama also used six different pitchers. Redshirt freshman Chase Lee came on in the sixth inning and threw 1 2/3 clean innings to pick up his first collegiate win.
“I was glad we got a lot of guys out there,” Bohannon said. “That was something we wanted to do going into Tuesday and Wednesday. I think we pitched maybe 11 guys. Some of those guys were sharper than others, but we gave up one run in two games. That’s really positive.”
Junior Brock Love got his first start since March 12, 2017, before he suffered an elbow injury. He threw one inning, giving up one hit. Bohannon said Love would start Sunday’s game at South Alabama.
“I’m not sure that tonight’s performance would be real successful in league play,” Bohannon said. “But again, we have a lot of youth and inexperience. It’s February. I don’t think any team in America has played great nine times in a row. The positive part of it is that we were able to win the baseball game. It got hairy there in the middle. I was proud of our group for persevering.”
Reach Ben Jones at ben@tidesports.com or 205-722-0196.
