The No. 8 Alabama baseball team played a tight game against the Jackson State Tigers on Tuesday night, until the Crimson Tide’s offense exploded to break a 1-1 tie in the seventh inning. Alabama scored seven runs that inning and won the game 8-1.

“We got going in the seventh inning, obviously a huge grand slam by Ben Moore,” said coach Mitch Gaspard. “We are normally always pretty good after the fifth or sixth in the back of the game, but we need to have more quality at-bats in the front part of the game.”

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Jackson State began the game much better than Alabama and scored the first run of the ballgame with a home run in the second by senior Nick Marigny. On the pitching side, Jackson State starter Vincent Anthonia shut out the Crimson Tide for five innings with five punchouts. He was taken out after the fifth, and the bullpen did not do as well.

“Offensively I thought it was a struggle tonight,” coach Gaspard said. “We got to do a better job in the middle of the week when we got to take advantage of some opportunities, we got to execute better to take stress off the early innings.”

Alabama finally put up a run on the board in the sixth. Juniors Ben Moore and Wade Wass led off the inning with back-to-back singles. Then later with one out, freshman Casey Hughston hit a line drive over the right fielder’s glove for a double. That tied the game up 1-1.

Alabama blew the game open when Moore hit a shot over the center field fence for a grand slam in the bottom of the 7th to make the score 5-1. It was the first grand slam of his career. After that, the offense kept going. The team batted around in the inning and scored three more runs to make the score 8-1. The Crimson Tide finished with 14 hits. Five players had more than one hit.

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“We got the bases loaded there and then Ben [Moore] provides the big blow,” Gaspard said. “It was like that kind of started getting us going, and then we started to get good swings on pitches.”

It was Hubbard’s first ever start. Hubbard was on a pitch count after coming off an injury from last year and only pitched two innings, throwing a total of 24 pitches. After Hubbard left the game, senior Tucker Hawley came in to relieve him.

“[Hubbard] had been shutdown with a little shoulder problem, we wanted to give him an opportunity with as little stress as possible, and then they told me to take hold of it and close it out.” Hawley said. “Any time you add another arm to the bullpen is great.”

Hawley allowed no more hits in the game and finished with seven innings pitched. His ERA has now dropped to 0.68, and he has not allowed an earned run in 25.1 innings.

“I thought it was good to get Jake Hubbard back on the mound. I thought he did a nice job in the two innings he pitched, and then Tucker came in and I thought did a nice job to finish out the game,” Gaspard said.

Senior first baseman Austen Smith sat out Tuesday’s game with a wrist injury and should be back for the Tennessee series this weekend.

Next up for the Crimson Tide is a rematch with the UAB Blazers at the new Regions Field in downtown Birmingham at 6:30 p.m. Alabama lost to them 2-1 on April 9.

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