It had to happen at some point, but Alabama’s lengthy winning streak came to an end over the weekend.

The North Dakota State Bison beat the Alabama Crimson Tide 2-1 Saturday thanks to lights out pitching from Jacquelyn Sertic. The sophomore from Sparks, Nevada, tossed a complete game while completely shutting down the Crimson Tide offense through six innings before Alabama pulled off a potential game-winning rally in their last at-bat. With the win, North Dakota State snapped Alabama’s winning streak at 18 games.

Despite the Saturday loss to North Dakota State, the Crimson Tide dominated the field in their other four wins. Alabama run ruled Louisiana-Monroe, North Dakota State and DePaul before splitting their last two games with North Dakota State and Louisiana-Monroe.

Patrick Murphy’s squad has shown ways to not only win but dominate throughout the early part of the season with a variety of players leading the way.

It was no different this weekend as Peyton Grantham and Demi Turner each recorded 7 RBIs, while Haylie McCleney led the Crimson Tide with 10 hits.

However, the single most impressive individual performance during the Easton Crimson Classic came from Alexis Osorio. Osorio struck out a career-high 16 batters en route to a complete game in a 5-0 Crimson Tide victory over Louisiana-Monroe. Beside the 16 strikeouts, only one Warhawk batter got into scoring position the entire game.

SEC play is around the corner with an upcoming mid-week game against the Samford Bulldogs from the Southern Conference.

Alabama alum and current Samford head coach Mandy Burford is leading the program to new heights in her 5th season as the Samford coach. The Bulldogs won a school record 38 games in 2014 and came one game shy of a SoCon regular season title in 2015. Samford comes in with an 11-7 record but have been in position to win in the late innings in five of their seven losses. They started the season 4-5 but over the last two weeks have won seven of their last nine games.

Over the weekend, senior starting pitcher Mollie Hanson set a new Samford record by winning her 55th and 56th career victories against Jacksonville State over the weekend.

Similar to Troy University, Samford will have a Tuscaloosa native play in front of the home folks. Senior third baseman Callie Brister was a standout slugger at Hillcrest High School while setting numerous state records for the Hillcrest Patriots. Brister this season is having one of her best seasons at Samford as she is batting .393 with 5 home runs and 13 RBIs.

Tuesday’s contest is scheduled for a 7:30 PM first pitch and will be televised on the SEC Network.

 

College Softball Notes Around Alabama:

-Tuscaloosa native Ashley Rainey belted a walk-off home run Sunday in a 6-5 win over Furman.

-Troy University’s Erica Davis came a triple short of the cycle while hitting 2 home runs in a 10-9 win in 8 innings over Indiana State.

-After dropping their first 13 games, Alabama A&M defeated ETSU 6-3 for their first win of the 2016 campaign.

-UAB fell 10-0 in 5 innings to Tennessee for their 9th shutout loss and 5th loss to an SEC team this season.

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