Oklahoma Baseball: Sooners on 12-Game Victory Roll
By Chip Rouse
They may have been picked to finish sixth in their conference this season, but Oklahoma baseball certainly isn’t playing like it in the early going of the 2017 campaign.
The Sooners swept a doubleheader on Saturday over , extending their winning streak to a dozen games and their overall record to an impressive 13-1. The lone loss came in the second game of the season-opening series against 17th-ranked Long Beach State. OU won the rubber game of that series on Feb. 19 and haven’t lost since.
Oklahoma’s 12-game winning streak is the team’s longest since winning 13 consecutive games in 2013, and it is the best start to a season since 2008, when the Sooners started off 14-2.
The Sooners have been helped with a 19-game home stand to begin the 2017 season. They just completed four-game series sweep over Central Connecticut with an 11-2 victory on Sunday. OU scored a combined 33 runs in the series while holding Central Connecticut to just five total in the four games.
All 14 games this season for Oklahoma have been started by a sophomore Sooner pitcher.
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Through 14 games, Oklahoma leads the Big 12 in both hitting and pitching.
The Sooners are hitting .330 as a team and have two players hitting above .400 (Steele Walker, .429 and Brylie Ware, .417) and three ranked in the top 10 in the Big 12.
Sophomore Jake Irvin heads the OU pitching staff, which leads the Big 12 with a collective 2.23 earned run average. Irvin has an ERA of 0.45 in 20 innings and a 3-0 record.
Sophomore outfielder Steele Walker has hit safely in all 14 games this season and in 17 straight contests dating back to the end of the 2016 season.
The Sooners have five more games remaining in the current home stand, a midweek game with Wichita State and another four-game series next weekend hosting Buffalo. The OU hits the road for a couple of weeks before returning L. Dale Mitchell Park on March 31 for a weekend series with Texas Tech.