FROM CBB NEWS SOURCES
Alabama 9 Vanderbilt 7
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – University of Alabama baseball team scored in six of the eight innings to snap a season-high six-game losing streak with a 9-7 win over fourth-ranked Vanderbilt at Sewell-Thomas Stadium on Saturday afternoon.
Alabama tallied 14 hits in the win, including two by No. 9 hitter Jeff Texada, who also belted his first career Southeastern Conference home run in the sixth inning. Freshman shortstop Josh Rutledge, freshman second baseman Ross Wilson, sophomore left fielder Brandon May and Texada all had two hits each for Alabama.
The Crimson Tide answered every Commodore run on Saturday and added some key insurance runs in the seventh and eighth innings to snap its four-game SEC losing streak.
South Carolina 4 Mississippi State 1
Columbia, S.C. – Justin Smoak’s solo home run in the seventh inning started off a three-run seventh inning and starting pitcher Will Atwood allowed just one run in seven innings of work to pick up his second win of the year as South Carolina defeated Mississippi State 4-1 to win game two of a SEC baseball series at Sarge Frye Field. Carolina has won both games vs. the Bulldogs. The Gamecocks own a 14-5 record and are 3-2 in the conference while MSU is 9-11 and 1-4 in the SEC. Carolina and Mississippi State play the final game of the series on Sunday afternoon with first pitch set for 1:30 pm.
Atwood allowed just one run on four hits in seven innings of work to improve to 2-0 this year. He struck out five and walked three. Senior Brandon Todd came on in the eighth inning and hurled two scoreless innings of relief to pick up his first save of the year. He also struck out one batter. MSU starter Lee Swindle suffered the loss and is 2-1 on the year. He worked 6.1 innings and allowed four runs on five hits with a strikeout and three walks.
South Carolina Recap
Mississippi State Recap
Auburn 7 Kentucky 5
Joseph Sanders and Hunter Morris combined to drive in all seven Auburn runs and Cory Luckie went 8.0 innings to pick up his first Southeastern Conference victory as Auburn clinched its series against No. 2 Kentucky with a 7-5 comeback win on Saturday afternoon at Plainsman Park.
“The team played great behind me today. We had a couple of missteps (defensively) but the offense is really coming around. It makes it fun to pitch behind an offense like ours,” Luckie said.
Working with a 1-0 lead after a Morris sacrifice fly in the bottom of the first, Luckie (3-2) settled in for the next three innings before getting touched for four runs in the top of the fifth.
Auburn (14-8, 2-3 SEC) answered with three runs of its own in the bottom half of the inning as Sanders (2-for-4) laced a bases-loaded double down the line in right that scored three to make it a 4-4 game after five.
Florida 6 Ole Miss 4
Oxford, MS – Florida sophomore Kyle Mullaney (Jacksonville, Fla.) induced a game-ending 6-4-3 double play as the Gators (16-4/4-1 SEC) squared their weekend series at eighth-ranked Ole Miss (15-7/3-2 SEC) with a 6-4 victory on Saturday afternoon at Oxford-University Stadium at Swayze Field. With two runners aboard and the Rebels looking to duplicate Friday night’s come-from-behind win in the ninth, Mullaney had junior Cody Overbeck ground out to sophomore shortstop Cole Figueroa (Tallahassee, Fla.), who was able to turn UF’s second double play of the contest to preserve the triumph for junior Patrick Keating (Harrisburg, Ill.). Keating (3-0) yielded five hits and three runs over six innings, while Mullaney converted his third save opportunity.
Arkansas 14 LSU 13
BATON ROUGE, La. – As impossible as it was improbable, behind the pitching of Justin Wells out of the bullpen, the University of Arkansas Razorback baseball team came back from a nine-run deficit to stun the LSU Tigers at Alex Box Stadium in Baton Rouge, La., 14-13 in 10 innings on Saturday afternoon.
In another marathon game that lasted more than three and a half hours, the Razorbacks watched Wells throw a career long 7 1/3 innings of relief and blank LSU over the final five innings to pick up his first win of the season. Wells threw 126 pitches for the win and kept a potent LSU offense out of sync as he racked up out after out to give the Razorbacks hope.
Georgia 3 Tennessee 2
ATHENS, Ga. – Georgia extended its winning streak to six games and won their second consecutive SEC series after defeating Tennessee 3-2 in front of a season high 3,442 fans Saturday at Foley Field.
Bulldog shortstop Gordon Beckham (3-for-4, 2 RBI), who entered the game with a SEC-best .519 batting average, gave the Bulldogs the lead in the fifth with a two-run single for a 3-2 advantage.
Tennessee (13-7, 3-2 SEC) had jumped out to a two-run edge in the top of the second on three hits, including a solo home run by first-baseman Jeff Lockwood. Then, leftfielder P.J. Polk scored the second Volunteer run after Tanner Moore doubled into the left-center gap.
