Baseball hit hard by No. 9 Florida Saturday night

Alabama catcher Dominic Tamez (3) swings the bat in the Crimson Tide’s 13-6 loss to the Florida Gators on March 19 at Sewell-Thomas Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Courtesy of UA Athletics

Alabama catcher Dominic Tamez (3) swings the bat in the Crimson Tide’s 13-6 loss to the Florida Gators on March 19 at Sewell-Thomas Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Austin Hannon, Staff Reporter

After a rally that fell short on Friday night, the Alabama Crimson Tide (12-8, 0-2) was put in its place on Saturday night, losing 13-6 to the No. 9 Florida Gators.

The Gators (15-4, 2-0) offense hammered the baseball, tallying 18 hits and five home runs. It wasn’t a small committee, either. Everybody was getting involved. All nine players in the Florida batting order reached base at least once.

Left fielder Wyatt Langford had a highlight night at the plate, going 3-for-6 with two home runs and four RBIs.The Gators had five others record multi-hit games.

“Got to just give credit to Florida,” Alabama head coach Brad Bohannon said. “[They’re a] really good offensive club. I think their top five hitters are as good as anybody’s top five in the country. We didn’t execute enough pitches tonight. We gave up seven two-out RBIs. For the first half of the game, I thought it was an awesome college baseball game.”

The Crimson Tide offense was the opposite of Friday night. Alabama scored five runs in the first four innings, but couldn’t get any help on the mound. The Crimson Tide finished with 10 hits and five different batters recorded an RBI. Catcher Dominic Tamez had three hits, including a double.

“If you look at the ninth inning last night and then the first four or five innings today, I think we’re making some strides offensively,” Bohannon said. “If you score six runs in a college baseball game, typically you’ve got a pretty good chance to win. Two or three weeks ago, I don’t think we could’ve faced an arm like that and had the at-bats we had. Hopefully, this is something we can build on early tomorrow.”

Antoine Jean started for the Crimson Tide, but only lasted 3.1 innings. Jean allowed six hits and five runs. It wasn’t as bad as the relief effort from Hunter Furtado, who threw 73 pitches and recorded just seven outs. Furtado surrendered eight hits and six runs, all under the eyes of Bohannon, who left him in probably a few batters too long.

“It happened pretty quick,” Bohannon said. “Probably trying to get a little bit greedy, and certainly in hindsight, it would have been a good decision to get him out a little sooner.”

Alabama will look to avoid the sweep on Sunday afternoon. The Crimson Tide and Gators are set for a 1 p.m. CT first pitch on SEC Network+.