Alabama Baseball Loses Series Finale Against South Carolina

The No. 16 Alabama Crimson Tide dropped this weekend's series finale today, losing to the No. 18 South Carolina Gamecocks 9-8.

South Carolina reliever Ty Good earned the win on the afternoon, while Alabama reliever Tyler Fay was credited with the loss. South Carolina's Chris Veach got the save for the Gamecocks.

In his seventh start of the year, Alabama starter Greg Farone pitched 5.1 innings, allowing only three earned runs.

The Tide still took home the series win this weekend, as they won both the Thursday and Friday matchups against South Carolina.

The longball allowed Alabama to jump out to an early 4-0 lead, as three out of their four runs to start the game came via home runs, two from Will Hodo and one via Max Grant.

South Carolina would respond, tacking two on in the fifth on a Dylan Brewer two-RBI homerun and one in the sixth thanks to a Kennedy Jones RBI double.

While the Gamecock's offense was revving up, reliever Ty Good was weathering the storm for South Carolina in the bottom of the innings, allowing zero runs and one hit over three innings to quench the hot Alabama offense.

The Gamecock offense exploded in the seventh inning, knocking home five runs on a two-RBI double from Cole Messina, a two-RBI double from Ethan Petry, and an RBI single from Gavin Casas.

South Carolina added one more run the next inning on a wild pitch from Alabama reliever Pierce George to extend their lead to 9-4.

As all hope seemed lost in the ninth, the Tide began to rally back off a flurry of singles, a triple from Gage Miller, and an Ian Petrutz walk.

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With two outs, Evan Sleight appeared to load the bases on an infield single. However, center fielder TJ McCants accidentally overran the third base bag and was tagged out by the shortstop to end the game.

In his postgame press conference, coach Rob Vaughn took the blame off of McCants, stating, "We just had an unfortunate play there at the end. It's something we work on a lot, but clearly, it's coaching. We've got to do a little bit better. We've had some stuff throughout this year where I feel like some baserunning stuff has kind of come back to bite us. We'll clean that up and go work on that in practice. But, good weekend, love these kids, good fight, just unable to finish."

The Tide will look to rebound on the road this week at Samford on Tuesday and in Lexington against the Kentucky Wildcats next weekend.

For more Alabama Baseball content from Simon Besnoy, follow him on X/Twitter at @SimonBesnoy and stay tuned to Tide1009.com for daily news.