A Senior Night Disaster for #8 Lady Vol Softball vs. #3 Alabama

By Sawyer Hunley

Senior night is supposed to be a night of joy and celebration for the players who have dedicated four years of their lives to a team.

For the Lady Vols, it was that for about fifteen minutes, and the No. 3 Alabama Crimson Tide decided to put a stop to all of that joy as they run-ruled the No. 8 Lady Vols 12-0 in Sherri Parker Lee Stadium on Saturday night. 

Did I mention it was raining as well? 

The word disaster sums this game up quite perfectly for Tennessee. 

As a pitching staff, the Lady Vols gave up nine free passes. 

Giving nine free passes to the opposing team is not only a recipe for disaster, but it will also almost certainly cost any team a ballgame. 

“An offense is going to be incredibly good when you’re giving them freebies,” said head coach Karen Weekly postgame.

Alabama already has a very dynamic offense, with four players with nine or more home runs and no batters under .300 in their starting lineup.

If you give them free bases, they are only going to do more and more damage.

The biggest shocker of the day was how poorly Karlyn Pickens performed.

On her senior day, the Tennessee ace – who has built one of the most prolific careers ever wearing the Lady Vols logo – only threw 2 2/3 innings, striking out three and walking four, and hitting two batters. 

This is undoubtedly one of Pickens’ worst outings of her career.

For Alabama, the 12 runs scored are the most by Alabama over Tennessee since a 12-0 win 17 years ago in Knoxville to close out the regular season. That game was also the last run-rule victory for the Crimson Tide over the Lady Vols.

One outing that comes to mind would be her freshman year outing in the SEC Tournament again against the Crimson Tide, where she did not record an out while giving up four runs on two hits, three walks, and a wild pitch.

The offense was also a disaster, as the Lady Vols had only three base runners all night, coming off two hits and one walk.

The Lady Vols must get some offense going if they want any chance of making a run in the postseason.

And it doesn’t even have to be a ton of runs.

Coming into this game, since the start of the 2023 season, the Lady Vols were 166-10 when scoring three or more runs in a game. 

To clarify, that’s a 94% win rate.

Now, while three runs would not have helped much tonight, history says it normally does for the Lady Vols. 

“Make good decisions at the plate, that’s it, make good decisions,” said Weekly. 

Up Next: The Lady Vols will need to start making good decisions quickly if they want to turn this series around, as they will be back at Sherri Parker Lee Stadium for game two against Alabama on Sunday at 4:00 PM ET.

The game will be nationally televised on ESPN2.