The No. 3 Alabama softball team fell to the No. 6 Florida Gators 4-1 in the series opener on Friday.
With the loss, Alabama falls to 45-6 overall and 21-5 in the Southeastern Conference.
The series comes at a pivotal part of the regular season. Alabama has already earned the title of Western Division champions of the SEC, but has a chance to win the title of SEC regular season champions outright if they can win the remaining two games of the series.
It was a game of offensive stagnation and defensive inconsistency for the Crimson Tide. Florida jumped onto the scoreboard first with an unearned run in the top of the first inning.
Despite having no hits, Alabama had three runners on base before a Jackie Traina strikeout ended the Tide’s scoring threat.
After the first inning, the Tide was unable to muster a hit until the sixth inning. Alabama was plagued by defensive errors, giving up three in the first three innings. Kaila Hunt accounted for two errors but Alabama was able to keep Florida from capitalizing on its mistakes.
Part of that was because of Traina’s performance on the mound, where she only gave up three hits between the through sixth innings.
But Traina allowed three runs in the seventh inning. Traina rebounded with the Tide’s only score of the game, a solo home run, but it was not enough to overcome the Tide’s deficit.
“We beat ourselves in the game,” Traina said. “We just need to come out tomorrow and play our game. We don’t need to beat ourselves.”
Junior Kayla Braud said nerves were the reason for the Tide’s slow start.
“I think we had a little bit of anxiety,” Braud said. “We had a great crowd today, it was electric and everyone was excited. Sometimes that causes you to play out of yourself and try to do too much.”
Braud said she hopes the team will come out on the attack when two teams face off again Saturday at 3 p.m.
“We’ve just got to be more consistent as a team,” Braud said. “We can’t give her five innings to get in the groove. We have to make it challenging for her. We had a few at bats where she had to go high in the count but we’ve got to try to not do too much.”
Head coach Patrick Murphy said Alabama must attack good pitches.
“We’ve just got to come out right away,” Murphy said. “Whoever they throw we’ve got to go after quicker. We can’t wait until the sixth inning to start gaining on offense.”
Murphy said the Tide’s lack of hitting between the third and fifth innings slowed the team down.
“We want to give them our best game and that wasn’t our best game,” Murphy said. “We want to give them a good game. We don’t want to not go down fighting. We made adjustments too late in the game. We’re going to come back even hungrier.”
