Alabama Offense Baffled by Florida State in 2-0 Loss at Women's College World Series
Riding sky-high off a perfect game on Friday, Alabama spiraled down to Earth on Sunday.
The Crimson Tide softball team was punchless against a tired but scrappy Florida State team that handed No. 3 Alabama its first loss in the Women’s College World Series, 2-0.
Alabama (52-8) plays Florida State (47-11-1) on Monday to decide who goes to the championship series. The game was scheduled for later Sunday night, but a two-and-a-half-hour weather delay forced the change.
First pitch is 30 minutes after the other semifinal game Monday with James Madison and Oklahoma, which starts at 3 p.m. Both games are televised by ESPN.
Monday's forecast is 80 degrees and party cloudy with a 15% chance of rain for 3 p.m.'s game and 80 degrees, partly cloudy with a 6% chance after 6 p.m.
The championship series, which should have started Monday, is pushed back and begins Tuesday.
"We only had one runner at second base," head coach Patrick Murphy said. "You're not going to win too many games when you have one runner two second. She doesn't move from there. So tip your cap to their pitchers, and we need to do a better job tomorrow night offensively."
Alabama’s had no issues facing top pitching this week, combining for five runs on seven hits against Arizona’s Alyssa Denham and Hanah Bowen. The Crimson Tide tagged UCLA’s Rachael Garcia for six runs on seven hits.
Against Florida State? Alabama was baffled and confused by Caylan Arnold, who was 10-6 entering the WCWS semifinal. She gave up just two hits with five strikeouts through 4 2/3 innings.
Seminole ace Kathryn Sandercock came on in the fifth to shut the door on Alabama. She was perfect against the seven batters she faced to end Alabama’s win streak at 20 games.
"They have a great pitching staff, kudos to them," said Alabama third baseman Maddie Morgan, who had one of Alabama's two hits. "They're definitely making us do what we didn't want them to do. I think we were honestly pressing it a little bit too much. We just need to come out and make the little adjustments that we need to make."
Lexi Kilfoyl got the start in the circle instead of Montana Fouts, who tossed a perfect game against UCLA, and who won the WCWS opener against Arizona.
Kilfoyl held FSU in check through four innings, but found trouble in the fifth, giving up three hits to load the bases. With two outs, she then walked Sydney Sherrill after getting ahead 0-2 in the count and FSU took a 1-0 lead.
She couldn’t get out of the sixth inning without trouble either. A two-out triple from Dani Morgan was followed by a Josie Muffley RBI single to make it 2-0.
The final line on Kilfoyl was two earned runs allowed on seven hits with nine strikeouts in six innings.
"Yes, Lexi pitched a great game today," Morgan said, sitting next to Kilfoly in the postgame press conference. "And just as an offense we need to support you and we're definitely going to make those adjustments for whoever is pitching. But, yeah, Lexi you did great."
Florida State, having played two games Saturday, including one late into Sunday morning against Oklahoma State, had to turn around and face the No. 3 seed Crimson Tide early in the afternoon.
A half inning of action was all that got played before lightning arrived, delaying the game for two hours and 36 minutes.
It made for a long couple of days for the Seminoles, but it didn’t seem to matter.
"We fought and we won the game and we were just excited to have another day of games and then this game obviously getting delayed was another hiccup, but we work through that stuff all year," FSU's Sydney Sherrill said. "Coach always tells us, adversity we knew it wasn't going to affect us that much and we showed it this game."