On Tuesday, the No. 7 Alabama softball team beat the Liberty University Lady Flames 10-7. A double-header was scheduled between the two teams, but due to weather, the second game was cancelled.
About halfway through the first game, thunder and lightning created the first weather delay. After the rain passed, they were able to finish the first game. Then, in the bottom of the second inning of Game 2, with the score 0-0, the rain had damaged the field too much, so that game was cancelled.
At the beginning of the first game, the Tide got into a 7-1 hole at the top of the second. Alabama was able to come back and match Liberty’s runs, earning six in the bottom of the inning. Then the bad weather hit at the conclusion of the third inning, and the game was put on hold.
“It was poor weather and a poor start on our part,” said head coach Patrick Murphy. “You have to get credit to them. They swung the bat and had us on our heels.”
After the second inning, sophomore pitcher Amanda Locke pitched five scoreless innings to finish the game.
“To come back like we did and for Amanda to throw up five straight zeros, I thought, showed a lot on her part,” Murphy said.
The Tide was able to score four runs with two outs in the bottom of the second, taking advantage of walks.
“I said, ‘Everybody goes up, you’re going to crowd the plate and take until you get a strike,’” Murphy said, “because I didn’t think they were throwing very hard and just to see if we could work some good counts. A lot of them did exactly what we asked them to do.”
In the bottom of the fifth inning, Kayla Braud bunted her way onto first base, and a run by Cassandra Reilly-Boccia knocked her in for the Tide to take the lead, 8-7.
Later in the inning, senior Charlotte Morgan hit a two-run homerun, making the score 10-7.
“That at bat, I was battling whatever she was throwing,” Morgan said. “She came with a changeup, and I just missed it, so when she threw it, I had my timing. I was just trying to get to right-center gap. I wasn’t really trying to hit it over, but it went, so it works out.”
Liberty University is located in Lynchburg, Va., approximately 10 hours from Tuscaloosa, and is a member of the Big South Conference. The Lady Flames are 0-19 against SEC schools, recently coming off a loss against No. 23 Kentucky.
This was the first time for these two schools to play each other. After the win on Tuesday, Alabama is now 10-0 against schools in the Big South Conference.
Next up for the Tide is a road trip to Athens, Ga., to take on the Georgia Bulldogs in its first conference game of the season. Alabama will play a three-game series starting on Saturday, with a double-header kicking off at 1 p.m. and then a single game on Sunday starting at 2 p.m.
