Alabama baseball’s first SEC win of the season came with a bounce-back victory in its encore series at Tennessee.
Alabama baseball evens series with No. 14 Tennessee:
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Things didn’t go as planned for the No. 14 Alabama baseball team in its SEC opener Friday night. The Crimson Tide rebounded with its biggest win of the season Saturday in the encore, opening series of league play in the evening.
The final score was 6-3. Alabama baseball doubled its run total from Friday’s contest, while No. 5 Tennessee’s total was down significantly from Friday evening’s 11 runs.
In what was Greg Farron’s second outing as the starting pitcher on Saturday, head coach Rob Vaughn expected the left-hander to be on the mound and hoped that if Farron could do it, Alabama baseball would have a shot. In 5.1 innings, with a 92-pitch line featuring just one run with four strikeouts against a deep batting order, he delivered. The game was Vaughn’s first SEC win.
“That’s what we expect from him [Farrone], and I’ve seen it,” Vonn said. “Sometimes, when you see a lineup like that… sometimes you start to get knocked down, you probably don’t start to believe in your stuff as much. We talk about a lot of competition, everybody talks about competing, but that’s all I say. Time. We’re competing to believe that what you have is good enough… To do that, you have to send it to them. If you’re going to go down in flames, go down with your stuff, you are.”
Once again, the Crimson Tide (16-3, 1-1 SEC) scored in the first inning. That was after Farone worked around a bases-loaded, one-out jam without allowing a loss. The first two Volunteer batters of the game arrived, creating an quickly threat. Alabama baseball did the same and Ian Petrutz scored the first run of the night on an RBI groundout that sent in Gage Miller. “Second and third, no outs, that’s not what you want when you start the game,” Farone said. “I think at that point, I was attempt to cut the inning short. I wasn’t expecting to throw an out, maybe a run… If you get out of it, it brings all the momentum. That dugout, our dugout. And they just ran with it.”
Alabama baseball scored two more runs in the second inning, when a double by Bryce Ablin turned into an error-fest by the Tennessee defense and hurt both himself and Justin LeBron. LeBron hit a two-run RBI single through the left side in the third inning. With Ablin’s knock, LeBron’s RBI and Mack Gussett’s third-inning, run-scoring single in the bottom of the bat, the Crimson Tide went ahead by six in the fourth inning.
The Volunteers (18-2, 1-1 SEC) threatened in the top of the eighth, facing Crimson Tide around Alton Davis II. They scored one run to reduce the deficit to 6-2. Davis retired the next two to put a stamp on his 2024 SEC self-revelation. He then closed out the ninth inning for the win, stranding a pair of runners in the procedure. His performance earned him his first save in conference play. After Fay’s strong performance Vaughan wanted him out there and expected every ounce of effort from Sunday starter Hagan Banks.
Huge crowds witness the showdown. LeBron said it was a thrilling experience. Farrone said he had never played in front of such a crowd, pointing to a moment in particular where “Dixieland Delight” was played. “We want this project to be one where you can’t win against Tennessee on Saturday night and observance it like it’s the World Series,” Vaughn said. “You want that to happen. You should expect this group to happen when you come to The Joe.”