Oklahoma baseball concluded their week at the Frisco College Baseball Classic on Sunday night facing a familiar foe in recent years with the Dallas Baptist Patriots. After dropping the first two games to Arizona, the Sooners bounced back to defeat Missouri on Saturday to create an opportunity to escape the weekend with a split.
Unfortunately for Skip Johnson’s club, things didn’t go as planned as they fell at the hands of the Patriots 9-3. Left-handed starting pitcher Jake Bennett was superb in last Sunday’s win over Baylor, but really struggled in this one allowing nine runs in just four innings of work. The bullpen did a good job keeping Dallas Baptist under wraps the rest of the way, but the damage had been done.
The Patriots didn’t waste any time building a big lead scoring three in the first, five in the second and one in the third to hold a quick 9-0 lead. Oklahoma would struggle to get much going until the seventh inning when they pushed across their three runs on RBI walks by both shortstop Brandon Zaragoza and third baseman Peyton Graham before left fielder Kendall Pettis later scored on a wild pitch.
The loss slips the Sooners back below .500 at just 5-6 on the still very young season. Obviously, the week is a disappointing turnout for a team that finished last week in Round Rock very strongly and seemingly entered the event with a lot of momentum. It was known the starting rotation was the biggest question mark entering the season, and it had great struggles this week. It isn’t breaking any news to say they’ll need to find a way to get more length and better outings from their guys to have the chance to beat good teams consistently – and they certainly still have loads of time to figure things out.
It is far too early to press the panic button, especially with a lighter schedule played at home coming in the days ahead. If things don’t improve over the next couple of weeks, then it may be time for fans to start to have some worries.
As is common with the college baseball season, Oklahoma won’t get much time to recuperate. They’ll have the day off tomorrow before returning to action at L. Dale Mitchell Park against UT-Arlington on Tuesday night.