Alabama Baseball Not Selected to NCAA Regional

Of the 12 Southeastern Conference teams that made the SEC Tournament, the Crimson Tide, the South Carolina Gamecocks and the Kentucky Wildcats were the only three teams not selected to the postseason.

Author:
Joey Blackwell
Publish date:
May 30, 2022 12:37 PM EDT

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — After closing out the regular season and the SEC Tournament on a 4-2 run against Top 25 opponents, Alabama baseball's season was ended on Monday morning.

The Crimson Tide was not selected to participate in an NCAA Regional this season. Of the 12 Southeastern Conference teams that made the SEC Tournament, Alabama, South Carolina and Kentucky were the only three teams not selected to the postseason.

With Alabama softball not advancing past Regional play and Crimson Tide baseball not being selected at all, it will be the first time since 2018 that Alabama has not had either diamond sport play a game in the month of June.

On the season, the Crimson Tide amassed an overall record of 31-27, including a 12-17 record against SEC opponents. Non-conference play was highlighted by sweeps of Xavier, Murray State and Binghamton. In SEC play, Alabama posted wins against every conference foe they faced with the exception of South Carolina and Auburn.

Highlights of the Crimson Tide's season included a road sweep of then-No. 7 Ole Miss, series wins against No. 5 Arkansas and Texas A&M as well as a lone 6-3 victory at No. 1 Tennessee.

As an 11-seed in Hoover, Alabama started the SEC Tournament off with a 5-3 win over 6-seed Georgia before besting 3-seed Arkansas 4-3 to hand the Razorbacks their third loss against the Crimson Tide in a week's span. Alabama closed out the tournament with losses against 2-seed Texas A&M and 7-seed Florida to end its run.

After the Crimson Tide's ousting at the SEC Tournament, head coach Brad Bohannon was quick to list the reasons why he believed his team belonged in the NCAA Tournament.

"Obviously we're on the bubble, and we've done some really good things this year," Bohannon said. "We won a series from Texas A&M, we beat Arkansas three out of four, split four games with Georgia. Did a lot of good things. Look, you ask anybody in this league, I'd tell you there's 12 teams in this league, we deserve to be in.

"[...] We're way better than last year, and we deserved to be in last year, but we have a better pitching staff, we're better offensively, we're better defensively."

Regional play of the NCAA Tournament is slated to begin on Friday, June 3 and run through Monday, June 6. Super Regionals run from June 10-13, with the College World Series in Omaha, Neb. starting on June 17.

The CWS Finals will being on June 25, with the finals being a best-of-three series.