Oklahoma baseball: Sooners No. 3 seed in Big 12 Championship

By Chip Rouse | May 23, 2017

Nov 28, 2015; Stillwater, OK, USA; A general view of an end zone marker prior to the game between the Oklahoma State Cowboys and the Oklahoma Sooners at Boone Pickens Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Rob Ferguson-USA TODAY Sports /

The weather didn’t do Oklahoma baseball any favors this past weekend, with heavy rain downpours forcing the regularly scheduled Bedlam series with Oklahoma State into a one-day doubleheader in which the Cowboys outgunned the Sooners on both ends.

On the other hand, because the teams are so closely bunched between third and seventh place in the final Big 12 standings, playing just two games over the weekend might have helped the Sooners hold on to third place and the No. 3 seed in this week’s Big 12 Baseball Championship, which will begin on Wednesday at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark in Oklahoma City.

The Sooners are hoping that their return to the OKC venue will turn out better than the double defeat they endured there last weekend.

West Virginia had a chance to jump over Oklahoma in the standings, but the Mountaineers fell twice in three games at Texas over the weekend and finished fourth, a half-game back of the Sooners.

As the No. 3 seed, Oklahoma will take on archrival Texas, the No. 6 seed in the conference tournament, in the late game on Wednesday. Both the Sooners and the Longhorns have identical 34-20 season records. OU was 12-11 in the Big 12. The Longhorns were a game back at 11-12, but won the series with the Sooners, two games to one.

The Sooners lost all three games this season against Oklahoma State (the two teams played a single game earlier in the season in Stillwater, won by the Cowboys 4-3). The two wins over Oklahoma this past weekend proved to be just enough to earn Oklahoma State the eighth and final seed in this week’s Big 12 Championship.

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Although fans from the Sooner State would love to see a Bedlam tournament matchup, that would not happen, at the earliest, until Oklahoma’s third game in this year’s championship. The Sooners and the Cowboys are on opposite sides of the bracket.

Depending on the outcome of the OU-Texas Red River Showdown, the Sooners would play either the winner or loser of the game between No. 2 TCU and No. 7 Kansas in their second game of the double-elimination conference championship.

Oklahoma may be seeded higher, but they will have their hands full with Texas. The Longhorns have dominated the all-time series with their archrivals north of the Red River 129-52-2. Prior to this season, the Sooners had won three of the last three series with Texas, but their series win over the Horns in 2013 was their first over the Horns in 15 seasons.

The Sooners are 1-4 against Texas in the Big 12 Championship tournament, but the two teams have not met in the postseason since 2008.

Coach David Pierce is in his first season at Texas after replacing longtime UT head coach Augie Garrido, who retired after last season. The Longhorns are led offensively by first baseman Kacy Clemens, who comes into the championship hitting .308 with nine home runs and 42 runs batted in.

Southpaw Nick Kennedy will get the start on the mound against the Sooners. He has an 8-1 record with a 2.36 earned-run average in 16 games in 2017. OU saw Kennedy only briefly this season. He faced two Sooner batters in relief, issuing back-to-back walks, in a game won by Texas, 9-3.

The Longhorns lead the Big 12 in pitching with a staff ERA of 3.55 in conference games and 3.14 overall. Big 12 teams are hitting just .238 off of Texas pitching this season.

Sophomore center fielder Steele Walker lead the Oklahoma attack with a team-high .341 batting average and 48 runs batted in. He has an on-base percentage of .421 and a .561 slugging percentage. Senior first baseman Austin O’Brien is tied with Walker for the team lead in home runs with eight.

Freshman pitcher Nathan Wiles (4-3, 4.47 ERA will get the start for OU in the Sooners’ first game in the Big 12 Championship.

Oklahoma’s 34 wins coming into the 2017 Big 12 Championship represents the most wins by a Sooner baseball team since the 36 wins posted by the 2013 team, which went undefeated and won the postseason conference tournament that season.

The Sooners are 36-33 all-time in the Big 12 Championship. OU and Baylor are the only two Big 12 schools that have played in all 21 conference championships in Big 12 history. The Sooners have won the Big 12 Championship twice – in 1997, the first year of the Big 12, and again in 2013.

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