Alabama completed its sweep of the Tuscaloosa regional with a 9-7 extra-innings win Sunday night over Oklahoma State to advance to the super regionals of the NCAA baseball tournament.
The Tide, which is the No. 7 national seed in the tournament, will host the winner of the Tallahassee regional in a best-of-three series that will begin either Friday or Saturday.
St. John’s, the winners of the Big East conference, upset No. 10 national seed Florida State in Tallahassee on Friday and beat Northern Illinois in a rain-delayed game Sunday. St. John’s will have two chances Monday to beat Florida State and advance to play Alabama.
Alabama with two wins in the super regional would advance to its first College World Series since 1999.
Alabama is hosting a regional in Sewell-Thomas Stadium for the first time since 2006, when it lost to North Carolina. The program did not appear in another super regional until 2023, when No. 16 seed Alabama was swept by Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Those were the first two wins of what became a six-game NCAA tournament losing streak for Alabama, which made quick exits from the regionals each of the past two seasons. But Alabama ended that streak Friday night when it throttled Alabama State, 21-3, to open the Tuscaloosa regional before adding a 7-5 win Saturday over USC Upstate.
Alabama opened an early 4-0 lead over Oklahoma State on Sunday before the Cowboys responded with three runs in the third inning. The Tide led, 5-4, in the seventh inning when Oklahoma State pulled ahead with back-to-back solo home runs. But Alabama responded with a game-tying Eric Hines homer in the eighth inning, then Brady Neal broke the tie in the 11th inning with a two-out, three-run home run.