Lauren Sewell improved to 7-0 as the Tide’s starting pitcher in an 11-3 defeat of Jacksonville State. What started out as a shaky start for Sewell, who walked four batters and hit three, ended up as another win. Leslie Jury earned her first save of the season after she took over for Sewell in the top of the fourth inning.
“I think when your starting pitcher hits, walks, hits, walks but gets out of an inning and strikes out seven or eight. … It just doesn’t make sense to me. If [Sewell] can strike out seven or eight, she doesn’t need to hit or walk a couple of them. So we need to work on that, but she got out of a bases-loaded [situation] at the beginning,” head coach Patrick Murphy said. “We had a real good second inning, a real good fourth inning, and then I thought we finished it well. Two out rallies are awesome, and we’ll take it.”
Jacksonville State put the first run on the scoreboard in the top of the second inning on an Alabama error. The Tide answered in the bottom of the second with five runs after batting through the order. After starting the bottom half of the inning with a strike out, Alabama’s next five batters reached base. Jacksonville State’s right fielder Sara Borders committed an error while trying to catch a fly ball, and Alabama scored its fourth and fifth runs of the inning.
In the third and fourth innings, Jacksonville State scored two runs to cut Alabama’s lead to 5-3.
The Tide struck back in the bottom of the fourth inning after Jackie Traina hit a timely single to score Haylie McCleney from second. Jadyn Spencer hit a three-run home run with one out to extend the lead to 9-3.
In the bottom of the fifth inning, Traina ended the game after working the count full with two outs when she hit a walk-off single to score Ryan Iamurri and McCleney. Alabama improved to 33-5 with this 11-3 win.
McCleney was 4 for 4 on the night after batting 0 for 7 in the last two games of the Texas A&M series and 1 for 10 for the whole series. She scored three runs and had two RBIs against Jacksonville State.
“Haylie was very good, and you know she got challenged before the game,” Murphy said. “She was 0 for 7 in the last two games at Texas A&M, which with the speed and the bat control that she’s got, that should never happen. I thought she came back and played a good game today.”
“The more times we see a pitcher, the better we’re going to get. We’re going to make adjustments. We’re going to have better at bats,” McCleney said. “The more times we kept seeing her and the more times people kept getting on base, the more times we were bound to break through.”
Alabama hosts a three-game series with Missouri this weekend.
