Oklahoma baseball survives scare, stays unbeaten
There’s going to be days like this for Oklahoma baseball. You would be naive to think there wouldn’t be.
The good news? Oklahoma stayed unbeaten Wednesday, closing out a two-game sweep of Texas Southern with a 5-4 victory, improving to 8-0 on the season.
But it didn’t go without a scare.
Texas Southern scored three runs in the eighth and pushed across one in the ninth. Skip Johnson forced to turn to his best arm out of the bullpen in Dylan Crooks for the final two outs, stranding a pair of runners on the bases and the tying run in scoring position.
Less than 24 hours after posting 15 runs in a run-rule victory, Oklahoma struggled throughout offensively. Even despite posting double-digit hits, again. The big inning never came but hey – they won.
Sam Christiansen (2-for-3, RBI) and Dayton Tockey (2-for-4, RBI, 2B) continued to produce offensively, each delivering run-scoring swings in the seventh. At that point it felt like Oklahoma was going to be able to breathe, scoring three runs after the stretch to extend the lead to 5-0.
Then the bottom fell out. Sort of. For the first time all season, an Oklahoma bullpen option was taken to task. Junior relief pitcher Jason Bodin the unfortunate soul on the wrong end of a Texas Southern hit parade in the eighth. In total, the Tigers thinned the margin to 5-3 on a trio of hits and a hit batsman.
Freshman Jaden Barfield stemmed the scoring threat in the eighth with a punchout on four pitches but was unable to record the final three outs, giving way to Crooks who inherited the tying run at second and the go-ahead run at first in the final frame.
Freshman cohort Michael Catalano picked up his first-career victory after throwing two innings and allowing just a lone single, striking out four of the eight batters he faced.
NEXT UP
Oklahoma (8-0) hosts CSUN, after all, for a three-game set starting Friday with first pitch scheduled for 4 p.m.
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