In so many ways, this has been Auburn’s best baseball season in five years. Sunny Golloway has made undeniable progress in his second year on the Plains.
On the flip side of the state, this has been Alabama’s second-worst season in the six years that Mitch Gaspard has been the head coach.
Yet Alabama beat Missouri 4-3 Thursday in the SEC Tournament to keep its season alive, and Auburn followed by losing to Florida 11-2 to pack up its equipment bags and head home.
The Crimson Tide has won nine of its last 12 games as it advances to a Friday afternoon elimination game at the Hoover Met, and the Tigers have lost 7 of 10 as they anticipate their first NCAA Tournament bid since 2010.
Neither program has quite been the same since their paths crossed on the next-to-last weekend of the regular season. That three-game Alabama sweep, its first in Auburn in 32 years, will henceforth be known as Cage-gate.
Details vary depending on who’s telling the story, but there seems to be some agreement on two points.
Auburn, violating SEC policy, locked Alabama out of the indoor batting cages the first two days of the series. Alabama found a way in on the final day, which led to a verbal altercation between the coaching staffs on the field before the game.
Witnesses have identified Golloway as the angry instigator.
Alabama responded by scoring eight runs in the ninth inning that day, and if you believe there are baseball gods, they didn’t feel that was enough payback. They sent two more big-inning plagues down on the Tigers to end their stay at the SEC Tournament.
No. 1 LSU piled up six runs in the fifth inning Wednesday to turn an 8-3 Auburn lead into a 9-8 LSU win. Florida treated Auburn’s pitching even more rudely Thursday, scoring eight runs in the third inning to begin that 11-2 rout.
Auburn may be “a lock” to return to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2010, as Golloway said, but he still seems to be on the bubble in the eyes of at least a portion of his fan base. His abrupt personnel changes and often prickly personality have some Auburn fans wondering if he was the right choice to make their baseball program relevant again.
Talking publicly about possibly playing host to an NCAA regional before watching that ambition vanish in an embarrassing home sweep by your biggest rival – which was compounded by the Cage-gate nonsense – wasn’t a good look for Golloway.
At least he and his team will have a chance to redeem themselves in the NCAA Tournament, if the baseball bracketologists are correct. Given Auburn’s excellent RPI, it’ll be a shock if an at-large bid isn’t waiting when the tournament field is announced Monday.
Bottom line: That’s progress.
Alabama has no fallback plan. All Gaspard and company have is their next game. Win Friday and play again Saturday. Lose Friday and start making plans for next year.
The Crimson Tide has proven something in its three games in three days in this tournament, in the wins over Ole Miss and Missouri and even the one-run loss to Texas A&M in between. This team is better than its record, and it’s capable of competing with any opponent in this league.
Alabama’s longest SEC win streak this season is three – those three wins at Auburn. Match that with victories Friday and Saturday, and the Tide will reach Sunday’s final.
Both teams and both programs have plenty of work to do to get where they want to go, but it’s nice to see both Alabama and Auburn demonstrate a pulse heading into Memorial Day weekend.
The regular season wasn’t exactly historic for either team. There’s still a chance for the postseason to be a very different story.
