Monday was a rough day for both Oklahoma sports teams on the diamond. While the ladies of the softball team lost at the hands of Florida, the baseball team had their own business to tend to.
The mission was straightforward: Win and move on to the Super Regionals to face the Florida State Seminoles.
However, things didn’t go nearly as planned. The UConn Huskies, winners of the Big East regular-season crown, laid waste to the Sooners in Norman to punch their ticket to Tallahassee.
Carson Atwood received the start for the Sooners, while the Huskies sent out DIII transfer Gabe Van Emon to start things in the winner-take-all game.
After keeping the Huskies off the board first, the Sooners opened up the bottom of the first, looking to strike first and capture some serious momentum.
John Spikerman led the inning off with a single up the middle before Bryce Madron worked a walk. An Easton Carmichael double play followed and UConn coach Jim Penders decided to intentionally walk Michael Snyder. Snyder has terrorized opposing pitching staffs in the regional, which led to a Jaxon Willits ground out and the end of the inning.
What started as a promising half-inning fizzled out big time. That was virtually the game for the Sooners.
Both teams were held scoreless until the fourth inning, when things came apart for the Sooners.
Korey Morton cranked a two-run homer over the fence in left-center to put the Huskies out in front. Catcher Scott Mudler made a critical throwing error to complete what would have been a strikeout and the third out of the inning. The ball rolled to the wall on the right field, and Tyler Minnick raced around to third base.
After Skip Johnson relieved Arwood, he brought in Carter Campbell, who promptly gave up a two-run homer. The Huskies lead doubled to 4-0.
After connecting on a couple of singles, in the bottom half of the inning, OU remained scoreless. They couldn’t put together the big hit when needed.
Luke Broadhurst and Korey Morton delivered RBI singles for UConn later in the game to make it 6-0 and that pretty much decided the game.
Van Emon, hardly a flamethrower, used well-located breaking pitches to keep the Sooners off balance. His defense behind him, by far the best defensive unit in this region and the best defensive team OU has played all season, kept dazzling with spectacular plays and made the routine ones look routine. He pitched 7.1 shutout innings, allowed five hits, and walked just two batters en route to the win.
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— Oklahoma Baseball (@OU_Baseball) June 4, 2024
A dynamic offense like Oklahoma’s just ran into bad luck, and a much-improved pitching unit had one of its least effective outings in quite some time. Throw in some defensive miscues by the Sooners, and you will get the result.
With the loss, OU’s season comes to an ends. The Sooners will have quite a few returners but lose some valuable pieces as they leap to the SEC next season. There will be multiple decisions to make, and Skip Johnson and his staff will have to use the transfer portal to fill in gaps along the way.
Johnson and this team were a much-improved group, winning a Big 12 regular season title and earning a top 16 national seed. It’s not the way anyone expected the season to end, but OU shouldn’t hang its head. They put together a terrific season.
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