The last time Alabama baseball scored above four runs in a SEC game was March 31 against UGA. Alabama’s offense had been struggling, but on Sunday the bats produced seven runs in a 7-2 win to take the series against No. 8 Ole Miss. Alabama improves to 22-14 [8-7 SEC].

“At the halfway point being above .500 in this league is pretty good,” coach Mitch Gaspard said. “This was a team I don’t think anybody had high expectations for. We did, but not many other people did. I think we are showing right now that we can be a pretty good baseball team.”

Alabama had only scored above four runs, four times out of 15 SEC games before the game.  With a 1-1 tie going into the bottom of the fifth, Ole Miss made a pitching change. Thirty minutes later, Alabama scored six runs off of three Ole Miss pitchers in the half inning. Alabama had batted around and had three RBI doubles in the inning.

“That’s awesome to get run support. We know they can score runs they did it all fall. They made us look bad all fall,” starter Nick Eicholtz said. “When everybody gets that confidence back, they can do exactly what they did today. It’s so much easier to pitch with a lead like that.”

On the pitching side, Nick Eicholtz turned in another quality start. Eicholtz logged in six innings of work of one-run ball. He now has a 3-1 record and a 2.34 earned run average.

“We don’t have a drop off. We are going boom, boom, boom three guys that are all equally as good. Our team knows the we are going to have a really good chance to win every time we got out,” Gaspard said.

Alabama claimed the series after the two teams split pitching duels on Friday and Saturday. Alabama’s weekend starters combined for 20 innings and only gave up two runs, one earned. 

Alabama had its highest weekend attendance since 2003, with over 18,600 fans attending. Alabama will host Troy and South Alabama Tuesday and Wednesday.