Alabama Baseball's Brad Bohannon: "I Think We're a No. 2 Seed"
HOOVER, Ala. — For Alabama baseball, it's officially nail-biting time.
The Crimson Tide entered the 2021 SEC Tournament with little chance at making an NCAA Regional. However, after upsetting two top-25 opponents in No. 24 South Carolina and No. 4 Tennessee on back-to-back days, Alabama quickly revived their odds of heading to the college baseball postseason.
To head coach Brad Bohannon and his team's players, though, their resume for an NCAA Regional began far before this past week at the Hoover Met.
"I've been in this league 18 years as an assistant coach or head coach, and this is by far the best the league's ever been," Bohannon said. "I am exceptionally proud to have 14 league wins. That is so hard to do. I'm not going to apologize for our league record. I believe, if you put teams like Arkansas and Vanderbilt and Tennessee and Florida and Mississippi State in these other leagues, their league records would look a lot different."
Bohannon didn't stop there, though. In fact, he made the claim that the Crimson Tide has done enough this season with its 14 conference victories to warrant being placed as a higher seed in the upcoming NCAA Regionals.
"If we're trying to get the best teams in the postseason — if we're using the eye test — I think we're a No. 2 seed," Bohannon said. "I can tell you this, I think our league should have 12. There is no No. 2 seed that wants any part of Auburn's lineup. There's no No. 2 seed that wants to face Landon Marceaux in Game 1 of a regional, or Tyler Ras and Dylan Smith with Chase Lee and Landon Green behind them."
A No. 2 seed is quite a far-fetched claim, but when you look at the team's difficulties that it's faced this year, a clearer picture of his reasoning begins to emerge. In addition to recent injuries, multiple starting pitchers were injured for long stretches of the season including Preseason First Team All-American starting pitcher Connor Prielipp along with Antoine Jean.
Bohannon brought up the recent slew of injuries that the Crimson Tide faced in the closing weeks of the season.
"We've also had a couple of guys that have been injured that are coming back, like Drew Williamson played today and hit a ball 100 miles an hour off the bat," Bohannon said. "And Jacob McNairy and Brock Guffey are guys that missed — Brock missed nine conference weekends, McNairy missed four. Those guys are healthy and pitched really well against Mississippi State and down here."
In addition to injuries, Alabama also had the fourth-toughest schedule in all of college baseball. When you open conference play against the No. 1 team in the nation in Arkansas, host No. 3 Ole Miss followed by No. 6 Tennessee, have a road trip to No. 2 Vanderbilt then one final series against No. 6 Mississippi State, a 14-17 conference record suddenly doesn't sound that disappointing.
"It's incredibly hard to win 14 games in this league," Alabama All-SEC catcher Sam Praytor said. "This is the best league in college baseball. It's happened before — teams have won 14 games and have gone to a regional and have gone on to Omaha. Especially with the injuries that we've dealt with this year and then — I know Tennessee just beat us, but we beat them two days ago and they're a top-five team in the country.
"Some things haven't gone our way but it's incredibly hard to win games in the hardest conference in all of college baseball."
Alabama finished the regular season with an overall record of 29-22. With their two wins in the SEC Tournament, the Crimson Tide's number in the win column increased to 31, surpassing the highly-coveted mark of 30 wins that is considered a qualifying criteria to make a regional.
Regardless of whether Alabama makes it to a regional or not, the Crimson Tide made noise in its first SEC Tournament appearance since 2016 — the first under Bohannon. Finally with some tournament experience under its belt, things are finally looking up for a program that has been absent from the national baseball conversation for so long.
That being said, relief pitcher William Freeman believes that what Alabama was able to accomplish this past week is enough for its season to continue.
"Definitely with the run we made this past week — I'm don't know for sure but I feel like not many people were expecting us to make it this far," Freeman said. "We've shown what all we can do and I'd like to think we'd make a good chance."
With the semifinals and finals yet to be played in conference tournaments across the country, the teams in the regionals will be announced on Monday. Until then, though, the Crimson Tide will have to wait on the edge of its seat until that fateful moment.
For now, Alabama baseball will simply have to watch and wait for the NCAA Selection Show (11 a.m. CT on Monday, ESPN2).
"I don't have a plan for that right now," Bohannon said regarding his plans on waiting for Monday. "I was planning on playing Saturday and Sunday and taking Monday off. We'll get together here in the next few hours and get that figured out."
