This week has been one wild ride for the Alabama baseball team, but Saturday they ended it on a high note by taking the final game in the series against No. 5 Vanderbilt with a 2-1 victory Saturday to win the series.
Earlier in the week, reports came out that there were suspicious bets placed involving the Crimson Tide in regard to last Friday’s game against LSU. As the week progressed, more and more facts started to trickle out pointing fingers at then-Alabama head coach Brad Bohannon. Finally on Thursday, just hours before the start of the first game of the weekend series with No. 5 Vanderbilt, Alabama made the swift decision to fire Bohannon, according to University of Alabama athletics director Greg Byrne, "for, among other things, violating the standards, duties, and responsibilities expected of University employees."
With Bohannon relieved of his head coaching duties, Alabama elevated pitching coach Jason Jackson to interim head coach Thursday afternoon only a few hours before Alabama was set to take the field against No. 5 Vanderbilt. Jackson and the Crimson Tide, in what was an awful situation, managed to defeat all odds and come away with the upset Thursday night. Friday, in the second game of the series, Alabama’s luck ran out as Vanderbilt came away with the win to tie the series up at one game apiece.
With the series on the line Saturday afternoon, Vanderbilt lit up the scoreboard first with an RBI double from Davis Diaz in the third inning. Alabama would later tie the game up at one run apiece on a Drew Williamson solo homer in the fourth inning.
The game would remain stuck at 1-1 until the bottom of the eighth inning when Mac Guscette squared up an 0-1 pitch off of Vanderbilt reliever Thomas Schultz and sent it over the left field wall for a solo homer giving the Tide a 2-1 lead. Guscette was just recently cleared to return to play after taking a wild pitch off the neck last Sunday against LSU that caused him to spend a brief time in the hospital.
Alton Davis would come into the game in the ninth to close the game out for the Crimson Tide, but it was the cleanest of saves after a single, a walk and a hit batter loaded the bases with two outs. Davis eventually induced a ground out to pick up his sixth save on the season. Kade Woods was credited with the win after pitching two shutout innings in relief.
Saturday was a huge win for a Crimson Tide squad that showed a lot of fight against one of the best teams in the country despite a distracting week. Until this weekend, Alabama hadn’t won a series against Vanderbilt since 2012.
"I can't say enough about our guys, just the overall effort,” Jason Jackson said. “I was just so proud of them. We've been in a ton of those really tight games this year. We always say, 'Good teams win most close games,' and we've been in a bunch of those that haven't gone our way, but today we went out and took it and made it happen for us. That's a really good series win, so I was definitely proud of our guys."
Alabama faces Troy on Tuesday in Montgomery before returning to SEC play at Texas A&M on Friday.
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