Just a Minute Alabama Softball 6th in Preseason SEC Poll
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00:00 This is Bama Central's Just a Minute. I am Blake Beiler here with Katie Windham
00:07 and today we're gonna be talking a little bit of Alabama softball. The
00:10 players had a press conference yesterday, the season's getting close and today we
00:15 found out that the SEC coaches preseason poll came out and Alabama was picked
00:20 sixth. Tennessee was picked to win the league followed by Georgia, both of them
00:25 received six first-place votes. Katie, what are your thoughts on the preseason
00:30 poll about Alabama's placement? Do you think they're too high, too low, just right?
00:33 What are your thoughts on that? I'd honestly say that this is about just
00:38 right for this team. Last year they finished fifth and this year you're
00:43 entering a season with kind of a lot of question marks. You know, it's first year
00:48 of the post-Montana Fouts era. They have a really big pitching staff, probably the
00:52 biggest they've ever had under Murph with six different pitchers. You have
00:56 Jayla Torrence and Alex Salter and Lauren Essman returning. Out of those
01:01 three, Jayla came on really strong in the postseason last year but
01:05 has struggled some throughout her career. Alex Salter's had an up-and-down career
01:08 and Lauren Essman's really more of a utility player they're gonna use and
01:13 just kind of a left-handed option. Then you brought in two transfer pitchers,
01:16 Kayla Beaver and Ailey Johnson and then a freshman in Jocelyn Briskey.
01:20 I think that the number one, I don't even think that's a clear-cut,
01:26 who's the number one pitcher is gonna be. I think it's maybe gonna be kind of back
01:28 and forth between Jayla and Kayla Beaver. I think if Alabama is gonna have any
01:32 long-term success this year, I think you're gonna kind of hope that maybe
01:35 Kayla Beaver kind of emerges as that number one pitcher. Then you
01:41 look at offensively and that's an area Alabama's really struggled the last
01:44 couple years. They have hired the hitting coach this year with a
01:47 third-paid assistant and also brought in Caleb Rowe. So you're gonna be looking
01:51 at people like Bailey Dowling, Jenna Johnson to kind of lead you offensively.
01:55 Alabama also has a pretty tough SEC schedule when you look at
02:02 the way their non-conference is not super deep but obviously these
02:07 rankings don't don't affect that. They play Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Ole Miss,
02:12 A&M, and Arkansas and Tennessee. Their last two series of the year, oh no, I'm
02:18 sorry, the very last series is at Auburn. So your last three series and two of
02:25 them are on the road or against teams that were picked to finish ahead of you.
02:28 It's not a super easy schedule for Alabama this year. There will be
02:34 some losses along the way. There will be some bumps and bruises on the road
02:38 post-Montana fouls. But hearing from Murph in the preseason and on some
02:45 podcasts, he's pretty high on this team. I think six is about right, kind of
02:51 middle of the pack but towards the top of the middle of the pack. That makes
02:54 sense with room to move into that top four double by territory if some people
02:58 really step up this year. And then I think really also with this SEC
03:01 preseason news, Alabama did not have a preseason all-SEC selection, which I
03:05 could be wrong, but I would imagine this is the first time in a very, very long
03:08 time that's happened. And I think that's maybe gonna be a challenge to the team
03:12 of, okay, for the first time in a while Alabama softball is kind of under the radar.
03:16 Does that have, which Murph hates the words expectations, but super high
03:20 expectations coming into a year. No one's picking you on preseason all-SEC. You
03:24 know, who's gonna step up and be that player that's there at the end of the
03:27 year? Because I would imagine there will be at least one person, probably more,
03:31 from Alabama on that team at the end of the year. So it'll be an
03:36 interesting season starting in less, I think maybe two weeks from Thursday in
03:40 Atlanta. Yeah, it's 15 days until the start of the season. Alabama starts
03:46 against Villanova in the Buzz Classic over in Atlanta. I believe that's hosted
03:51 by Georgia Tech, another team they'll play in that little tournament.
03:55 But it's definitely an interesting, gonna be an interesting season for
03:59 Alabama. The first, the start of kind of a new era, the post-Montana fouts.
04:03 Definitely gonna be interesting to see how Alabama finishes. Looking forward to
04:07 that, but this has been Bama Central's Just a Minute.
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