Alabama Baseball Suffers First Loss

Boca Raton, Fla. – After winning the first two games of a three-game series against Florida Atlantic, the Alabama Crimson Tide dropped the third game, 3-0, on Sunday afternoon from FAU Stadium. The loss marks the first of the season for Alabama, as the Tide drops to 6-1, as FAU improves to 4-3, after snapping a three-game losing streak.

Alabama Coach Mitch Gaspard said, “First of all you have to tip your cap to Strawn. He was really effective today, throwing two pitches consistently for strikes and working ahead. We got out of our game plan a little bit today and tried to pull the ball and made some early outs. We never got into a rhythm offensively, but that has a lot to do with the pitcher on the other side and how Florida Atlantic played today.”

"Strawn" was Florida Atlantic pitcher Jeremy Strawn.

The Alabama bats were held at bay on Sunday, as the Tide collected just four hits against FAU starter Jeremy Strawn. Strawn threw eight scoreless innings, with now walks and six strikeouts, to improve to 1-0. Hugh Adams threw a scoreless ninth to record his second save of the season. UA starting pitcher Spencer Turnbull (0-1) took the loss after throwing six innings, allowing three runs on eight hits with a walk and two strikeouts.

“Turnbull gave us a quality start and Hubbard did a nice job keeping the game close to give us a chance, and defensively we had an errorless game. It’s a little disappointing to not have more opportunities offensively to score runs, especially when you have a chance to sweep. Overall on the road winning two out of three games is a nice start, but our mission is to be good every day, and we took a step backwards today offensively.”

Jake Hubbard threw 1.2 scoreless innings and Justin Kamplain pitched a third of an inning to finish the game for Alabama.

Three of the four Alabama hits came with two outs with Ryan Blanchard getting a hit in the third, Kyle Overstreet a single in the fourth and Georgie Salem a single in the sixth. Brett Booth singled to lead off the Alabama eighth and was the only player for the Tide to get on base to lead off an inning and reach second base against the Owls.

Florida Atlantic took a 1-0 lead after the first three hitters of the game reached base. After Turnbull walked the first FAU hitter, a hit-and-run single put runners on the corners for first baseman Mark Nelson. Nelson delivered a bloop single to left field to score Nathan Pittman. After Turnbull got Corey Keller to pop out to second, a 4-6-3 double play ended the inning to prevent further damage.

FAU added to its lead in the fourth. After the first two hitters of the inning singled to put runners on the corners, Turnbull struck out Robert Buckley and a ground ball to third cut down Corey Keller at the plate. After Mitch Morales legged out an infield single to load the bases, Brendon Sanger’s single to right field drove in two, extending the Owls’ lead to 3-0 after four, to complete the scoring in the game.

Alabama will return home for a midweek game against Samford on Tuesday night. First pitch is scheduled for 6:05 p.m. CT, from Sewell-Thomas Stadium. Pitching matchups have not been determined yet.