Alabama players open up on potential for Crimson Tide baseball in 2024

Alabama is ready for the 2024 baseball season and to improve upon last year’s finish. Pitcher Riley Quick and catcher Mac Guscette think there’s a lot of potential.

The story of last year, other than making the NCAA Tournament, was the firing of head coach Brad Bohannon amid a betting scandal last spring. Now that the Crimson Tide turned the page, they’re ready for a new era.

That’s the way Quick sees it.

“The potential of this team is really high,” Quick said. “We got a really good squad, got great pitchers, great hitters. And we’re very close, like we said earlier, and we can definitely make a very big run (trying to get to Omaha) this year.”

Guscette was more present of mind in the sense of focusing on one game and series at a time. Although he acknowledged the goal of getting to Omaha for the College World Series.

Yeah, I mean, we don’t want to get too far ahead,” Guscette said. “But I mean, obviously everyone’s dream is to go to Omaha, compete for a College World Series. But I mean, I think the cool part about this team is we don’t really care about next week. We don’t care about the upcoming weeks. It doesn’t really matter for us. We just want to go play that day. Take them one at a time and be 1-0 on the day.”

There seems to be a new motto around the clubhouse this year. It’s a feeling of Alabama is ready to play loose in 2024.

So far, Alabama is 3-0 after winning a weekend series over Manhattan College.

“I think the guys are ready,” new head coach Rob Vaughn said on Thursday. “They’re prepared. Now, my biggest goal for these guys is to go be free. They’re ready. Go play aggressive, go have fun, go play really hard. It’s going to be really interesting. No story goes out here just as smooth as can be. There’s going to be bumps. There’s going to be struggles. There’s going to be injuries. There’s going to be different things throughout the year.

“But the thing I’m excited about is this group loves to compete, they’re prepared and I’m ready to go sic them on the rest of college baseball now.”

The Crimson Tide will be back in action Tuesday. Alabama plays a single game against Middle Tennessee in Tuscaloosa at 5:00 p.m. ET.