I swear I'm not making this up, just as the bus pulled up with a police escort, a smattering of rain came down even though the sun was still out. Sure enough, as they brought the trophy out to cheering fans a rainbow formed.
Just when you think you've seen everything ...
I ended up writing a column asking if this is the golden age of Alabama athletics, but it was the one from Saturday that got the most attention.
Here it is for those interested -- from BOL:
They couldn’t do it again, could they?
At Sewell-Thomas Stadium, the University of Alabama baseball team was down to its final out against Vanderbilt, with two men on, first baseman sophomore Austen Smith at the plate, and the Crimson Tide down a run. The last two conference games played there on Saturdays had ended the exact same way with electrifying walk-off home runs.
Meanwhile, a little later in Duluth, Ga., gymnastics’ Super Six would once again be decided on one final routine. Similar to a year ago, Alabama and Florida were going head-to-head on balance beam and floor exercise, only this time the roles were flip-flopped, with senior Ashley Priess, who sat out 2011 with an injury, in the crucial anchor spot on arguably the scariest apparatus in collegiate athletics.
The inside fastball shot off the bat and started to carry with the wind blowing out.
The final dismount sent Priess flipping into the air.
The ball cleared the wall just below the main scoreboard in left-center field.
The landing stuck.
The baseball team celebrated as if it had won the national championship.
The gymnastics team did because it just had, its second straight and sixth overall.
“I’m just so proud that they never gave up,” gymnastics coach Sarah Patterson told reporters in the back yard of her biggest rival, and now has as many national championships as the man who originally hired her, Paul W. “Bear” Bryant.
From softball winning at Georgia to men's golf taking a huge lead in the SEC Championships, there was magic surrounding the athletic program Saturday, just two days after President Barack Obama put on quarterback A.J. McCarron’s national championship ring while hosting the football team at the White House.
What other possible conclusion could there be?
For example, Smith came into the game batting .205, and his last home run was against Central Florida in last year’s NCAA Regional. He nearly didn’t play due to any injury sustained the night before when he made the baseball sin of sliding into first base and jammed his fingers and knuckles on the bag.
“He had to get X-Rays, his hand’s been swollen since last night,” Coach Mitch Gaspard said. “He swung the bat early and we kind of went with it.”
But three straight home walk-off home runs on Saturdays, even Gaspard said he’s never seen anything like that in 24 years of coaching. It’s even more remarkable considering the way this year’s team has played, 16-24 overall and 6-11, which even with two consecutive wins over the Commodores still has the Crimson Tide at the bottom of the league standings.
“I’m still in a little bit of shock right now,” Smith said. “I didn’t think it was going to get out. I thought it was going to bounce off the fence or something, so I was just running. Saw it go over, and just lost my mind.”
Meanwhile, the gymnastics team’s performance was nothing short of amazing. After opening with a 49.45 on floor exercise, it followed with a head-turning 49.625 on vault, which was the highest team score of the day even with UCLA’s Vanessa Zamarripa nailing a perfect 10.
To put it further into perspective, Florida’s 197.775 was the best runner-up score in NCAA Championships history, as the Gators placed second for the third straight year. Never before had a team with 197.7 or better failed to win the title, but on Saturday there were two as UCLA was a close third at 197.75.
Alabama’s 197.85 tied for the best score ever by a team not hosting the NCAA Meet (with Georgia 2007), and third overall behind UCLA in 2004 (198.125) and the Crimson Tide’s 198.025 in 1996. With Patterson’s other titles in 1988, 1991, 2002 and 2011, it’s her first back-to-back championships.
“That was an incredible performance by all the teams,” Patterson said. “I felt like because of the quality of teams, it was going to come down to the very end and that’s just happened.”
In both sports, though, just as important as the clutch performances were the ones by those setting them up.
In baseball, freshman starter Taylor Guilbeau gave up just one hit over six innings and had a career-high seven strikeouts. Down 6-4, senior third baseman James Tullidge started the winning rally with a leadoff single, and eventually scored on a sac-fly, and with two outs freshman right-fielder Ben Moore came back from being down 0-2 in the count to draw the walk to being up Smith.
“That never gets old,” Moore said of seeing yet another walk-off. “There’s something to it, I don’t know what it is.”
For the gymnastics team, senior Geralen Stack-Eaton earlier had a 9.975 on vault and a crucial 9.95 on floor. Kayla Williams and Marissa Gutierrez only completed in two events each, but made them count with straight 9.9s, and Kim Jacobs led off on beam with the same score.
“We just believed in ourselves on beam, and knew that we could do it,” said Stack-Eaton, who also notched a 9.9 after Sarah DeMeo’s bobble only ratcheted up the pressure.
Florida had gone into the final rotation with a very slim lead after Alabama struggled on the uneven bars, but was on floor where the scores had been relatively low al weekend. That didn’t change for the Gators, as Priess needed 9.875 to tie and a 9.9 to win.
The celebrating started before the judges posted the 9.95 score, tying her career best, and once again, the team that captured the SEC title won’t be getting national championship rings.
“It was just an amazing night,” Priess said.
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