2025 Alabama Softball Preview

Alabama softball will begin the 2025 season on Friday in Tucson, Arizona, beginning head coach Patrick Murphy’s 27th season as the head coach of the Crimson Tide.

Before the Tide’s season gets underway, let’s take a look at the roster, the schedule, and a general outlook on the 2025 season as Alabama looks to get back to the Women’s College World Series for the third straight season.

Roster

Let’s start with the pitching. Jocelyn Briski returns after a stellar freshman season, and should serve as the Tide’s ace this season. She started 15 games last season, and went 2-0 in regional play of the NCAA Tournament last season. She comes into the season with a lot of hype, being Alabama’s lone preseason All-SEC selection and being named the No. 48 player in college softball coming into the season according to Softball America.

Behind Briski, Alabama brought in two transfer pitchers to bolster the pitching staff. Emily Winstead was a 2-time CAA pitcher of the year at UNC Wilmington, while Catelyn Riley posted a 2.81 ERA at Ole Miss last season. Alea Johnson also return for her second year in the Alabama program after transferring in from LSU.

In the infield, Alabama returns multiple starters. Junior catcher Marlie Giles is back, as well as junior first baseman Abby Duchscherer and senior second baseman Kali Heivilin. The rest of the starting infield will likely be manned by transfers, notably Mississippi State transfer shortstop Salen Hawkins and Louisiana transfer third baseman Brooke Ellestad.

When discussing the roster ahead of the 2025 season, Murphy was particularly complimentary of Giles, who is a team captain.

“I really think Marlie Giles grew up a lot in the offseason,” Murphy said on Tuesday. “Very good athlete. She got stronger in the offseason. Her pitch selection is way better, and obviously she’s a very competitive person behind the plate. And I think that’s what this pitching staff needs is someone like her.”

The outfield returns two starters in juniors Kristen White and Larissa Preuitt, and the third outfielder spot could be won by true freshman Audrey Vandagriff, who was rated as a top-20 prospect coming out of high school.

As it has been the past few years for the Crimson Tide, the biggest question will be the hitting consistency. The team’s most consistent returning bat is White, who was .308 last season with four RBIs and no home runs. Alabama’s biggest returning bat is Giles, who led the team with seven home runs last year and was .305 for the season. Duchscherer returns as the team’s RBI leader from a year ago, coming off a 30 RBI season.

Alabama will hope to get some extra offense from Ellestad, who bat just under .400 with 54 RBIs at Louisiana last season, en route to a first team All-Sun Belt selection.

“20 kids on the roster, five pitchers, 17 hitters. Nine newbies, four freshmen, five transfers. So, we’re almost 50-50 old and new, and that’s exciting,” Murphy said. “I hope you guys get to see this as much as we have over the past four months, but this, to me is the most athletic team we’ve ever had. There’s two deep at every position, which is really good.”

Schedule

As if the SEC wasn’t already hard enough in softball, the additions of preseason No. 1 Texas and 4-time defending national champion Oklahoma make the league even more difficult. But before getting to conference play, Murphy again put together a challenging non-conference slate to prepare the team for SEC play.

Alabama opens the season at the Candrea Classic in Tucson, where the Tide will play against No. 22 Washington and No. 16 Arizona during the 5-game event. Notably, Washington’s team features Alexis DeBoer, daughter of Alabama football head coach Kalen DeBoer.

Next, the Tide will play in the always-loaded Clearwater Invitational, with games against San Diego State, Liberty, Ohio State, UCLA, and Oklahoma State.

The SEC schedule works out were each weekend alternates home and road series against conference foes. Alabama’s four home series are against No. 24 Mississippi State, No. 12 Georgia, No. 2 Oklahoma and No. 15 Missouri, while the road series are against No. 8 Texas A&M, No. 10 LSU, No. 3 Florida and South Carolina. That’s right, all but one series in the SEC slate is against ranked teams.

In total, the Crimson Tide will play 14 nationally televised games throughout the season, all airing on ESPN networks.

14 nationally televised games for the Crimson Tide this season!📺#Team29 #RollTide pic.twitter.com/LwFcrDCT3H

— Alabama Softball (@AlabamaSB) February 5, 2025

Outlook

As you can already tell, the SEC is going to be ridiculous this season. The conference features 11 teams in the preseason top 25 according to the NFCA Coaches Poll, including the entire top three, and 10 of the top 15. Alabama is the preseason No. 11 team in that poll.

The Crimson Tide was picked 10th in the preseason SEC coaches poll, coming in behind three teams it’s ahead of in the national poll in Georgia, Arkansas and Missouri.

It’s undoubtedly going to be a challenging season, and with the strength of the SEC losses in both games and series are going to be inevitable. The flip side of that is, with the schedule as difficult as it is, losses likely won’t be punished as harshly by the selection committee, which gives the Tide a great shot at hosting a regional or better if it navigates the schedule with even moderate success.

Alabama has hosted a regional as a top-16 national seed every season since the current NCAA softball tournament format began in 2005, and looks to continue that streak into 2025.

“Hopefully good defense to start. I think our hitting is gonna be better,” Murphy said. “I just want to see which pitcher shows us the moxie we really want in the circle against some good teams out in Tucson.”