'Follow the Home Run': How Season-Long Adage Led to No. 1 Alabama's Run Rule

TUSCALOOSA, Ala.— Patrick Murphy doesn't even know how many times he's said it this season.

"Murph all year long has said, ‘Follow the home run. Follow the home run,'" Alabama outfielder Audrey Vandagriff said. "Sometimes we do it, sometimes we don’t. But one thing about our team is we’re very consistent, so that’s just one thing I really want to do for Murph, I wanna do for our team. Once Marlie hit that home run, the floodgates open.”

Marlie Giles blasted a one-out solo home in the second inning to start a six-run rally for the Crimson Tide on the way to an 8-0 run-rule victory over USC Upstate in the NCAA tournament opener for No. 1 Alabama.

Vandagriff followed it up with a single, and Alabama scored six runs on six hits in the inning. It put to fruition something that the Crimson Tide head coach has been preaching all season.

"I just feel like if they give up a home run, but then they get three in a row out, they have their confidence back," Murphy explained. "But if the next kid can get a knock and then the next kid, and then it’s like, ‘Oh, here they come.’ It’s this snowball effect. I call it, don’t them off the hook. Whoever is next, they know they’re almost more important than the home run just to get on base.”

The Crimson Tide added on a run a piece in the third and fourth innings to move into run-rule territory with the eight-run lead, including a solo home run from Vandagriff in the third inning.

Alabama had about as efficient of a game you could ask for to open postseason play. The game lasted less than an hour and a half, and the offense did exactly what a No. 1 team should do. Freshman pitcher Kaitlyn Pallozzi pitched a complete game with just 77 pitches thrown across the five innings, allowing Murphy and the rest of his staff to have full use of the rest of the bullpen for the remaining games this weekend.

"If we had to, we were going to go with another pitcher who has specific pitches that we didn’t want everyone to see," Murphy said. "So I was glad that she got to throw all five innings, and we didn’t have to put anybody else in, so now it’s like a secret weapon in our back pocket kind of for Saturday and Sunday.”

The Crimson Tide will face the winner of Friday afternoon's game between Belmont and Southeastern Louisiana in the winners' bracket game on Saturday at 1 p.m.

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