HOOVER, Ala. -- Alabama baseball entered the SEC Tournament with dreams of bringing the conference tournament title back to Tuscaloosa for the first time since 2003. Those dreams quickly turned to nightmares as 5-seed Florida dominated the Crimson Tide, winning the SEC Tournament quarterfinal matchup with a 13-3 run-rule victory. "Yeah, obviously not the way we wanted today to go, right?," Alabama coach Rob Vaughn said. "Peterson, man, this was the third time we've seen Peterson in the last two years and by far the best version of him we've seen the last two years. The stuff was real. Tons of strikes. We had a couple opportunities there in those early innings to get a two-out hit and maybe get some momentum on our side and he executed some pitches and just wasn't quite able to do that. Then the momentum of the game kind of shifted there in the fifth inning. Just couldn't quite get off the field. You felt the momentum get in their dugout and there was kind of a snowball rolling downhill after that."The Crimson Tide earned a top-four seed, giving them a double-bye and setting the program up for expectations as three wins in four days would result in a championship. The 4-seeded Crimson Tide's circumstances got even sweeter, drawing the 5-seeded Florida in the quarterfinal round, a team Alabama swept in March. Alabama starting pitcher Tyler Fay no-hit the Gators in March. He picked up where he left off, rolling through the first three innings cleanly, only allowing one hit and striking out three batters. Kyle Jones opened the fourth inning, popping out to Bryce Fowler, but then Fay ran into problems. Brendan Lawson stepped into the box and hammered the fourth pitch he saw over 444 feet over the centerfield wall to crack the scoreboard and break the mystique Fay held over the Gators. Fay tried to bounce back and struck out Blake Cyr for the second out. Ethan Surowiec made sure Fay couldn't get back into the groove as he smoked a solo home run 447 feet into the parking lot to give the Gators a 2-0 lead. Florida's offense turned up the temperature on Fay in the fifth inning. Karson Bowen opened the inning with a single. The Gators accumulated two quick outs before Hayden Yost doubled over Brady Neal's head in right field to dent the scoreboard. Kyle Jones singled to score Yost and ultimately knocked Fay out of the game. "Honestly I thought -- that's happened at times, right? Like, solo homers don't beat you," Vaughn said. "At the time, like, shoot, Lawson got into that one. Then I think it was Surowiec. I don't remember who hit the other one. I think it was Surowiec. Just two really good swings out of those guys. But you're sitting there 2-0 and we had had some guys on base and some opportunities. Those homers weren't really the game changer. It was really what happened there in the fifth. You got a chance to get off the field, you get almost a ridiculous play with Braun (phonetic) and Holt, like wild."But leadoff single, fly-out, ground-out, you're sitting there with two guys on base or nobody on base, two outs. And then we just couldn't get quite off the field. They get a big two-out hit, which like even then you're like, okay. Jones stays over one, unfortunate, kind of flips it in there. But even there, you're sitting there 4-0. Like, the game is still firmly where you want it at 4-0. You're not really flinching too much there. Then it was the next couple plays, just not able to get off. We kind of, I don't know if Brady [Neal] had a tough time seeing it, and I'm not sure if he just had a bad read on it. I'm not 100 percent sure. But obviously, the triple followed up by the error that scored some home runs just blew it open on their side a little bit. And that's where the game changed."The homers I didn't think affected anything. That's part of the game. We responded to that plenty of times. We just couldn't quite get off the field there in the fifth."Matthew Heiberger entered in relief, but the problems continued for Alabama. Heiberger hit the first batter he saw, and Blake Cyr tripled to score Jones and Lawson. Justin Lebron kept the inning going as the Alabama shortstop couldn't field Surowiec's ground ball cleanly, scoring another run on the error. When the inning was finally complete, the Gators had a 7-0 stranglehold on the quarterfinal contest. Ashton Crowther entered the ballgame in the seventh inning, but the Crimson Tide reliever couldn't record a single out. He gave up four runs on three hits and a walk as the Gators broke the game open and took an 11-0 lead. Offensively the Crimson Tide struggled throughout the game, striking out 14 times on the evening. Alabama got runners on base in each of the first five innings, but stranded six runners as the offense couldn't come up with a clutch hit to dent the scoreboard. "I honestly thought that the bats off Liam [Peterson], I thought, were pretty darned good," Vaughn said. "I mean, when you're throwing 100 with two different breaking balls and commanding stuff, like, go get them, right? It's going to be tough. There's just nothing for free there. And they played good defense behind him. And we just couldn't quite get that big hit early. And I don't know if we gave them away. I didn't love some of our at-bats on McDonald. And that's nothing against him. I mean, just punching out, looking at fastballs away or things you can't do. And we gotta fight a little bit tougher in those."So against Peterson, no, I was fine with the way we competed there. That guy's going to get his punches when he had the stuff that he had today. We needed to make McDonald work a little bit harder. And I thought we made it a little bit too easy for him. So that's the piece we've got to be better at, is kind of that point of the game right there."Sign up for our free newsletter and follow us on Twitter/X, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Threads, and Blue Sky for the latest news.Alabama Crimson Tide On SIAdd us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow