The Auburn softball team, with a 5-6 SEC record and a recent victory over South Carolina, will look to continue its win streak at home tomorrow against No. 6 Alabama, 7-4 in SEC play.
"It is helpful going in to the Alabama series with a little bit of confidence," said coach Tina Deese. "We are hoping to get a few of our injured players back as well, and hopefully those things will give us a little boost going in to the Alabama series."
The bats came alive for the Tigers last weekend as they scored 11 runs in the Sunday game. "Things went well this weekend," said sophomore catcher Elizabeth Eisterhold. "We scored a lot of runs for our pitchers, which made them kind of relax a little bit." Eisterhold had a career performance Sunday, accumulating three hits and driving in four runs. Alabama will be coming off a tough weekend series loss to Florida.
"We have a really young team," said Alabama coach Patrick Murphy. "We have 12 sophomores and freshman, which is strange for us because we have been upperclassmen dominated the past couple of seasons."
Both teams find themselves with a young lineup, which can be difficult in the SEC. "If you don't show up to play in the SEC each week you are going to get beat," Murphy said. "There are too many good coaches and too many great players on all these teams and you can't take a weekend off." As of March 23, the SEC had four teams ranked in the top 13 according to espn.com. Alabama was ranked fifth in that pole.
"That's why we play," Deese said. "It is in my opinion one of the toughest conferences one through 11 in terms of teams we play, but that's what makes it interesting." It will not be an easy task for Auburn preparing for the Crimson Tide, still considered to be one of the nation's best.
"Offense and Kelsi Dunne," Deese said. "Those are the two things we know about (Alabama). We know they are going to get out there and hit and Dunne is a fine pitcher. You're not going to shut them out." Recently, Alabama has become known for prolific scoring.
"We know what to expect from their pitching staff and they have a really good hitting team," Eisterhold said. "We know they are going to score runs against us, we just need to try and put up more than they do."
Alabama has played one of the toughest schedules in the country. Before the Florida series, it had played 12 games against top 10 teams and went seven and five.
Alabama has also lost six games at home this season after losing only four home games in the past three years.
"(Auburn's) a difficult team to prepare for," Murphy said. "Plus they have alotofnewkidstoo,alot of players that we don't know about offensively, so it will be a tough team to scout. Anna Thompson is one of the best pitchers.
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