Sooner Baseball Season Ends With Second Shutdown by West Virginia
By Chip Rouse
It was great while it lasted, as they say, but the hot bats that fueled Sooner baseball to back-to-back victories in the Big 12 postseason tournament were cooled off on Saturday by the same team that shut down Oklahoma in the tournament’s opening game.
West Virginia, the four seed in this year’s Big 12 Baseball Championship, defeated OU for a second time in three days, eliminating the Sooners from the tournament and effectively ending their season. The Mountaineers parlayed a three-run second inning, a three-run fourth and added a four-spot in the seventh in rolling to an easy 11-1 win over the Sooners.
The game was ended after seven innings because of the run rule.
In two early morning contests against the Mountaineers in the tournament, Oklahoma managed just one run and a total of six hits. West Virginia disposed of the Sooners 6-0 in the opening game on Wednesday.
More from OU Baseball
- Oklahoma baseball: Checking in on Sooners active in MLB
- Oklahoma baseball: A year ago today, it was OU in the CWS championship series
- Twenty-nine years ago today it was Oklahoma baseball celebrating a ‘Natty’
- Oklahoma baseball season comes to end in regional loss to East Carolina
- Oklahoma baseball: Sooners bounce back in NCAAs with 10-1 win over Army
The two games with West Virginia bookended a pair of tournament wins by Oklahoma in which the Sooner offense exploded for a combined 30 runs on 30 hits in a 13-7 win over Kansas State followed by a 17-4 rout of No. 1 seed Texas Tech.
The Sooners scored their lone run in the first inning on a leadoff single by Alex Wise. Wise stole second and went to third on a throwing error, and scored on a single by Steele Walker. OU catcher Renae Martinez stroked a pair of singles, in the second and fourth inning, and that was the only offense the Sooners could manage off of West Virginia pitcher Connor Dotson, who struck out nine in 6 1/3 innings.
West Virginia designated hitter Kyle Davis wielded the big bat in the Mountaineer victory. He went three-for-five at the plate, including a three-run homer and a double that drove in four runs. Two other Mountaineers had two hits.
The Sooners, who led the Big 12 in fielding in the regular season, committed three errors in the game.
Oklahoma ends the season with an overall record of 30-27-1 and 11-13 against Big 12 teams.