The Wildcats beat the Crimson Tide 6-4 to secure a series sweep.
Alabama baseball fell 6–4 to Kentucky on Sunday afternoon, completing a three-game sweep for the Wildcats to open SEC play. The Crimson Tide was no-hit through six innings before scoring four runs in the seventh, but stranded five runners in key spots down the stretch.
"We played bad this week," head coach Rob Vaughn said postgame. "We didn't play good enough. We deserved what we got this weekend." Kentucky starter Nate Harris threw six no-hit innings to start the game, walking just two batters and allowing no runners into scoring position. Alabama finally broke through in the seventh as Jason Torres doubled and John Lemm was plunked to get him out of the game. Both scored in the inning, charging Harris with two earned runs in an otherwise dominant outing. "He wasn't doing anything we didn't expect him to do," Vaughn said. "He was sinking the baseball, which we knew he did. He was throwing two little different breaking balls, a bigger slider, and a little cutter, nothing we didn't expect. We just couldn't get flush contact. And it seemed like, when we did, there were a handful of hard-hit balls early, and they made good plays on them." Alabama would score four runs in that seventh inning as Will Plattner, Bryce Fowler and Justin Lebron all recorded RBI. Brady Neal grounded out to end the frame with Fowler and Lebron in scoring position, but with Kentucky's lead cut to 5-4, the Crimson Tide was right back in the game. The outlook got even better in the eighth. After Hagan Banks put the Wildcats down 1-2-3, Alabama took advantage of an error by third baseman Tyler Cerny and loaded the bases with two outs. Brennan Holt, who had impressed all series in the nine-hole, struck out swinging on three pitches to strand all three runners. Kentucky added an insurance run in the bottom of the inning, but it did not matter. Fowler, Lebron and Neal, the top of the lineup, went down 1-2-3 to end the game and give Kentucky the sweep and send Alabama to the bottom of the conference standings. "There wasn't much we did well," Vaughn said. "We didn't throw the baseball great. We didn't defend the baseball well at all. We didn't hit with runners in scoring position... we've got to acknowledge where we fell short, and not make an excuse about everything, but stick together." The SEC is a gauntlet in every sense of the word. The Wildcats are a good baseball team, but Alabama will face many others that, on paper, are even better. The sweep will inevitably increase the external noise around the program, which Vaughn is urging his team to ignore. "These dudes are gonna go to their phones as soon as we get to the locker room, and people will tell them how bad they suck and that it's a disgrace to the game of baseball," Vaughn said of his team. "If you start believing it and caring what people on the outside think, it's not going to go great. Play for the dude next to you. Keep showing up for the guy next to you." Alabama returns to action on Tuesday in Mobile against South Alabama before hosting a ranked Florida team in its SEC home-opening series next weekend.Theodore Fernandez is BamaCentral’s baseball beat reporter and a co-host of The Joe Gaither Show. He also works as a weekend sports anchor at WVUA 23 News in Tuscaloosa and serves as one of the station’s lead high school sports reporters. Fernandez is a news media student at The University of Alabama and is pursuing a master’s degree in sports management.
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