Looking to bounce back from their loss to Texas State on Wednesday night, Oklahoma baseball returned to action on Friday against No. 9/10 Texas at UFCU Disch-Falk Field in Austin to open up Big 12 play.
Unfortunately for the Sooners, the night would belong to the Longhorns as they were able to outlast Skip Johnson’s club in a nip and tuck game that took 11 innings to decide a winner. After pitching a clean tenth frame, Oklahoma right-hander Luke Taggart gave up a two-out walk-off double to right fielder Douglas Hodo III to end the game 4-3 and suffer his second loss of the season.
Oklahoma was the squad to strike first, though, as they plated two runs in the top of the first inning after a wild pitch brought one home and first baseman Tyler Hardman doubled in another.
Texas would strike back with three runs in the bottom of the second off of Sooners ace Wyatt Olds to take a 3-2 advantage. Olds would settle in after that, pitching the next four innings cleanly to finish his day with six innings pitched, three runs allowed and eight strikeouts.
The score would remain 3-2 all the way until the eighth inning when Oklahoma would knot things back up with catcher Jimmy Crooks coming across on a wild pitch. Closer Jason Ruffcorn would then proceed to toss shutdown innings in the next two frames, but the Sooners couldn’t add so the game would go into extra innings tied up at three apiece.
The Longhorns would then go on to win it in the eleventh on the aforementioned walk-off double by Hodo to take the first game of the series. The loss drops Oklahoma to 12-9 on the season and, of course, 0-1 in conference play.
This will certainly be a tough one to swallow for the Sooners, as it was a back and forth battle with their biggest rival that was there for the taking. There are undoubtedly positives to take away, such as Olds’ bouncing back after the tough second inning and the rally late to tie it, but this will go down as a rough loss nonetheless.
Game two of the series will be tomorrow evening at 5:30 p.m. CT as Oklahoma will look to tie things up to hopefully set up a rubber match on Sunday.
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