Patrick Murphy explains why he didn't play Montana Fouts against Tennessee

After dealing with a hyperextended left knee over the last couple of weeks, star Alabama softball pitcher Montana Fouts did not see the mound in the Crimson Tide’s loss to Tennessee to open up play in the Women’s College World Series.

The plan originally against the Vols was to possibly play Fouts given how the game unfolds. However, Tennessee got up 4-0 in the second inning and never looked back en route to a 10-5 victory they dominated from start to finish. The lopsided loss and grotesque defensive performance had folks asking after the fact: where was the Bama ace?

Well, according head coach Patrick Murphy, the plan was to insert Fouts if the game was close later on but now they’ll just save her for tomorrow’s game.

“Yeah, she’s fine,” answered Murphy when asked about her status. “To me it’s like either tied, within a run, or a lead. So I’m not sure what’s going to happen tomorrow, but today that would have been the deal.”

Obviously, that was never the case today as UT ran away with it as Jaala Torrence really struggled on the mound, lasting just 2.1 innings while allowing six hits and six runs. After a strong stretch of recent play — she’d given up just two runs in her last 30 innings in the NCAA Tournament — what was so off on Thursday afternoon?

Per her head coach:

“I’m not sure I know. The home run to the lefty was too good of a pitch. I watched the replay on the scoreboard. Other than that, I’m not sure because I thought her velocity was really good at the beginning of the game.”

Murphy went on to explain that his team has had trouble stopping the bleeding after giving up big scores early on.

“It was the two-out rally that killed us when we went up there as well, and in the SEC tournament they had a huge rally with two outs, bases cleared two outs. It wasn’t like two people on and we got two outs. There was nobody on.

“They got a thing going there with two outs. We just need to stop the bleeding, and it happened to us up there in Fayetteville and kind of happened again today. They got like the three-run home run, I think, that was a big hit. The lefty, that might have been a two-run home run. They got big hits with people on base.”

With Montana Fouts back on the mound tomorrow, you’d have to think Alabama avoids falling in such a crater back-to-back days.