Alabama’s time in the 2024 SEC Baseball Tournament came to an early end Tuesday. The No. 7 seed Crimson Tide was dominated 10-5 by No. 10 seed South Carolina in the single-elimination matchup.
Despite the brutal loss, the Crimson Tide may still have a chance to make a run in the 2024 NCAA Baseball Tournament. Regardless of the selection outcome, the loss concludes Alabama coach Rob Vaughn’s first SEC season at the helm. Vaughn said the group he’s gotten to coach in his first year at Alabama has been a special one.
“I think that's the biggest takeaway," Vaughn said. "I get to show up to work every single day with people that believe the same thing I believe, and these kids, it's a special group of kids. We've loved them hard, we've coached them hard. It's a group that, hopefully, I get the chance to coach at Alabama for a really long time. But I'll never forget this group of kids and how they bought into everything we've asked them to do.”
Vaughn was announced as the 33rd head coach of Alabama on June 13, 2023, after the program parted ways with former head coach Brad Bohanon. The 36-year-old from Corpus Christi, Texas, had never played or coached baseball in the South. After playing for Kansas State, he began his collegiate baseball coaching career with the Wildcats. Vaughn then coached at Maryland from 2013 until he took the Alabama job last summer. After helping the Terrapins two Big Ten titles, he arrived in the SEC, where the conference presented an entirely new ballgame.
“You have that slogan: "It just means more," Vaughn said. "And for the last 11 years, I've been on the other side, getting really mad at when people would say that, and then you step into it and you get it a little bit. You get the crowds, you get the environment, you get the investment, you get the support. You get all of those things, and you do see it. It does mean more to people when you come down here.”
One thing that set SEC apart in Vaughn’s first season was the competition level. Currently, six SEC teams are ranked in the top 25, four of which are ranked in the top 10. The middle of the league is also highly competitive, as five teams finished the regular season with a 13-17 record. Seedings in the SEC Tournament between LSU, Alabama, Vanderbilt, South Carolina and Florida all came down to tie-breakers.
Vaughn’s arrival in Tuscaloosa also came with turnover. In the 2024 season, Alabama only returned pitching coach Jason Jackson, and only one full-time position player, catcher Mac Gussette. Despite many fresh faces around him, Gussette praised the new coaching staff’s work during their first season in Tuscaloosa.
“Coach Vaughn and the whole coaching staff that came in are awesome,” Guscette said. “They get us prepared every day at practice. That's all you can ask as a player. And I think that him and everyone who came with him, and J.J. who stayed have done a great job all year.”
Vaughn described his first season coaching in the SEC as a "meat grinder." The Crimson Tide's SEC campaign has been an up-and-down journey, from pulling off the series upset over No. 1 Arkansas at home to Tuesday's loss to South Carolina.
Alabama will receive its seating for the NCAA tournament during the college baseball selection show, which begins at 11:00 a.m. May 27. The show will air on ESPN 2.
