What Alabama Softball is Playing for This Weekend at Ole Miss

As the regular season winds down, postseason seeding is on the line for the SEC and NCAA tournaments.

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — For Patrick Murphy, it feels like just yesterday that his team was down in Clearwater, winning four of fives games at the preeminent non-conference tournament in college softball, yet now No. 14 Alabama softball is entering its final weekend of the regular season. 

The Crimson Tide (36-16, 12-9 SEC) closes out the regular season with a three-game series at Ole Miss (28-23, 7-14 SEC.) 

"Now it’s three at Ole Miss that are still important because their RPI is inside the top-35," Murphy said Wednesday. "There’s still a lot of stuff to play for. And this is the best time of the year.”

When the calendar flips to May, the heat turns up not just with the temperature, but also with the pressure in the standings. Teams are fighting for postseason positioning both in conference play and on a national scale. 

Winning the series against LSU last weekend improved Alabama's national standing to No. 12 in the RPI and continued to boost its No. 1 strength of schedule, but other results around the league (namely Arkansas winning the series over Tennessee) hurt the Crimson Tide's chances of getting a top-four seed in the SEC Tournament. 

Tennessee is still at the top of the league standings with a 17-4 conference record. Georgia is second at 15-5. Auburn and Arkansas are tied for third at 13-8 with Alabama one game behind them. However, both teams hold tiebreakers over the Crimson Tide because of the head-to-head series wins at Rhoads Stadium.

This means Alabama would need to sweep Ole Miss, and need either Arkansas or Auburn to lost two out of three this weekend to leap frog one of them to earn the double-bye. Arkansas and Auburn play the two worst teams in the SEC with the Razorbacks at Missouri and the Tigers hosting Mississippi State. 

Regardless of how this weekend shakes out, the Alabama head coach told his team Tuesday that whatever seed they get, they deserved. 

"The two above us, we played them here, and we lost two out of three to both of them," Murphy said. "Now, we’re hoping for someone else to help us, which is not a good feeling at the end of the year SEC or otherwise. You've got to take care of your home turf, and we didn't do it.”

Senior outfielder Jenna Johnson said the team is hoping to use this weekend at Ole Miss to propel themselves into a long postseason run. Last year, Alabama lost its first game in the SEC Tournament and failed to make Super Regionals for the first time ever.

For Murphy, his top focus down the stretch is continuing to get more people on base whether it comes from walks, hit by pitches or base hits doesn't matter. Because of the recent dominance of Montana Fouts in the circle, Alabama has been able to win several close games, but Murphy still believes the offense has big scoring potential in it.

After some costly errors in recent losses that snowballed into bigger issues, Johnson talked about defense being a priority this weekend.

"We definitely want to come out strong with our defense and keep it to as low-scoring of a game as possible," Johnson said. "Momentum is a huge thing for our team, so playing strong defense and then being able to get the bats going on offense is going to be huge for us.”

First pitch between the Crimson Tide and Rebels is scheduled for 6 p.m. Friday.