Andrew Pinckney crushes towering grand slam to give Alabama early lead over Vanderbilt
Right when everything seemed to be going wrong for the Alabama baseball program, RF Andrew Pinckney put his entire team on his back by smashing in a grand slam to get the Tide a 5-1 lead over No. 5 Vanderbilt.
A hit-by-pitch, a single and a walk loaded the bases for the Tide and with two outs, Pinckney played a full count before going yard for the 11th time this season. He’s now up to 35 RBIs on the year as well.
Vanderbilt scored its only run of the first two innings off of a solo home run from RF RJ Schreck. Alabama scored its lone first-inning run off an unearned sac-fly by DH Dominic Tamez.
Catch the rest of this SEC matchup live on ESPNU. It is the first of a three-game set that will conclude on Saturday.
Fired Alabama baseball coach Brad Bohannon ‘connected with betting activity’
Hours after Alabama fired baseball coach Brad Bohannon, The Athletic is reporting that Bohannon’s firing was indeed related to a potential Alabama baseball betting scandal that is under investigation by the program.
David Ubben and Andy Staples of The Athletic report that Bohannon “was found to be connected with betting activity” that regulators had flagged.
Alabama had not directly linked the Bohannon firing to the betting investigation in its statement released Thursday announcing the firing, noting instead that Bohannon had been fired for violating the standards, duties and responsibilities of university employees, among other reasons.
The situation began unfolding late last week when an independent integrity firm alerted the Ohio Casino Control Commission that there were two suspicious bets on the Alabama-LSU game on Friday night. The “suspicious wagering activity” took place at the BetMGM sportsbook at Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati, Ohio, and multiple states began to halt bets on Alabama baseball games, according to ESPN.
According to Ronnie Johns, the chairman of the Louisiana Gaming Control Board, via a report from NOLA.com, two bets were under scrutiny, including one large bet.
“There were a couple of bets made in Cincinnati, Ohio,” Johns said. “One was on a parlay which involved the LSU-Alabama game, and then there was another straight-up (money line) bet, I was told it was a large bet that involved LSU-Alabama.”
Johns confirmed the bets were on the Tigers to win, leading him to believe the suspicious activity didn’t come from the LSU side.
“That in itself indicates that there’s definitely no suspicious activity on the part of LSU,” Johns said. “You don’t typically suspect the team that was picked to win the game. The problem would have been whether someone on the Alabama side was suspicious of activity.”