Auburn coach Butch Thompson addresses what Tigers must to do to attack Alabama's pitching

Butch Thompson’s Auburn Tigers have dug themselves a significant hole this afternoon against Alabama. At the bottom of the fifth inning, they find themselves down 5-1 to their rival in the Crimson Tide.

Still, Thompson believes in his team and their ability to still get the job done. In an interview on the SEC Network’s broadcast, he felt alright with where the Tigers were at and noticed some positives with a few changes that they had made.

“I think we’re in a good place. (A) tough game. I’m not sure that we’ve handled the baseball,” Thompson said. “I’d really like to have gotten out of that inning. I thought we were getting the contact we wanted once we made the change with (Tanner) Bauman there.”

In order to come back, though, Auburn will have to have some of those trends actually turn into runs on the board. In Thompson’s eyes, that means getting better at-bats at the plate from his group because, at the moment, they’re in desperate need of some offense down in Hoover.

“(We need) better at-bats against (Garrett) McMillan. (He’s) got four pitches going and it looks like we’re in between pitches at some point in time. Whether it’s getting through the third time in the lineup,” said Thompson. “We have to have some adjustments offensively because, if you look at the score now, we absolutely have to create some offense to get back in the game.”

Auburn came into today having won nine of their last ten games. However, if they want to remain in the field at the SEC Tournament past this afternoon, Thompson needs them to get some of those offensive adjustments to stick and quickly with the matchup heading into the sixth inning.

Jason Jackson reveals elimination game message vs. rival Auburn

Following a brutal extra-innings loss to Florida on Wednesday night, Alabama is back in action at the SEC Tournament with an elimination game against Auburn.

And the Crimson Tide have done a pretty good job following some advice their head coach gave them after the loss to the Gators.

“I told them last night. Let’s go back to the hotel. You can be pissed off,” interim coach Jason Jackson said live on the SEC Network during the fourth inning. “You should be pissed off. But we get up today, we don’t bring it to the yard with us.”

Because the SEC Tournament is double-elimination at this stage, Alabama still has a chance to make a run and compete for the tournament title. It’ll take some work, though.

But Jackson is confident his group has the right mentality to bounce back from last night’s loss, when Alabama blew a 6-3 lead in the 11th inning.

“Well you know one thing I know about this team is they’re pretty resilient, right?” Jackson said. “And they handle adversity pretty well. Yeah, last night’s a kick in the gut. You take a lead into the ninth and weren’t able to finish it out. You’ve got to give the Gators credit, man. Those guys did a good job with their at-bats in the last inning.”