By outreach@cw.ua.edu (Elliott Propes)
The home of the Birmingham Barons hosted an in-state, baseball matchup
between UAB and Alabama Tuesday night. Alabama had just come off of a big
series win against No. 7 LSU last weekend, but it could not keep the momentum
rolling. The Crimson Tide was shutout by the Blazers, 8-0. Alabama has now
dropped to a 13-7 record.
“These Tuesdays
are very important,” Alabama coach Mitch Gaspard said. “I just told the team, ‘These games are very, very important. We have to come out and play with good
energy and play well. There are only 56 of these and you have to perform at a
high level, and we didn’t do that tonight.’”
UAB out hit Alabama, 12-4. UAB scored four early runs in the
second inning and never looked back. Mike Oczypok, who took his first season
loss in his last start at Southern Miss, struggled again. He had four earned
runs on just 2.2 innings pitched.
“Really on our
end, it’s really the second Tuesday in a row that I thought was a pretty poor
performance on our side,” Gaspard said. “Came out flat and
they jumped on us in a hurry and we didn’t show a lot of fight tonight unlike
what we did this [last] weekend, so it was a disappointing night [Tuesday].”
Offensively, Alabama could not muster anything. The Blazers’ defense played well and corralled just about anything that was hit in play. Their left
fielder, Riley McCown, made a couple of diving snags to keep Alabama
scoreless.
“As a team we played really clean tonight,” McCown said. “We
just continued to put it on, put it on, one run here and one run there and just
didn’t let up.”
Alabama will face its first SEC matchup this weekend as Tennessee comes to Tuscaloosa.
“We just have
to keep working. We have to press these guys and go on,” Gaspard. “This team is very
capable. Just have to stay with it. It’s a disappointing night, but this team
will bounce back. They’ll be ready to go this weekend.”
Source:: The Crimson White Sports
