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Oklahoma baseball: Sooners’ season likely ends, and in blowout fashion

By Chip Rouse

Omaha, NE - JUNE 27: Outfielder Heston Kjerstad #18 of the Arkansas Razorbacks runs in to make a catch in the second inning against the Oregon State Beavers during game two of the College World Series Championship Series on June 27, 2018 at TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Nebraska. (Photo by Peter Aiken/Getty Images)
Omaha, NE - JUNE 27: Outfielder Heston Kjerstad #18 of the Arkansas Razorbacks runs in to make a catch in the second inning against the Oregon State Beavers during game two of the College World Series Championship Series on June 27, 2018 at TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Nebraska. (Photo by Peter Aiken/Getty Images) /
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If the Oklahoma baseball Sooners had any hope — let alone any interest — of making it into the postseason, you wouldn’t know it by the way they performed the past two days in the Big 12 Championship.

TCU scored 14 times — no, that is not a misprint — in the bottom of the fourth inning and went on to crush the Sooners 15-3 in a second-round elimination game on Thursday in the conference championship tournament in Oklahoma City.

Barring some kind of divine intervention, Oklahoma’s 2019 season is likely over. Before the Sooners game with TCU, the college baseball website D1baseball.com had OU on the outside looking as far as the Sooners’ prospects of making it into the NCAA Tournament.

A double-digit humiliation in a game that served as the Sooners last hope to keep playing this season all but makes it official. It’s wait until next year for Oklahoma baseball.

It’s difficult to believe here in late May that this same Sooner team was ranked No. 19 in the country earlier this season. OU has lost seven of its last 10 games, and it became painfully clear at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark on Thursday afternoon that the team has lost its competitive spirit and will to win.

A 14-run inning by the opposition in a game you have to win will suck the life right out of you.

The Sooners took an early 1-0 lead in the game in the second inning on a sacrifice fly by junior second baseman Conor McKenna. But that was just the calm before the storm as TCU sent 18 batters to the plate in blowing off the barn doors. The 14 runs and 11 hits in the inning were both a single-season record for the Big 12 Championship.

TCU added one more run in the fifth to go up 15-1.

Two normally dependable OU pitchers, Nathan Wiles and Levi Prater, who have won 15 games between them this season, were credited with all the damage from the Horned Frogs’ fourth-inning blitzkrieg.

TCU was very efficient with its offensive attack scoring 15 runs on 14 hits. The Horned Frogs blasted three home runs, all of them in the 14-run fourth. Sooner pitchers gave up seven home runs in OU’s back-to-back losses in this year’s Big 12 Tournament.

Oklahoma scored a pair of runs in the top half of the seventh and had the bases loaded when the inning and the game ended. The game was shortened to seven innings by NCAA run rule.

The Sooners will end the season with a 33-23 record. The 12-run loss is Oklahoma’s worst of the season. The worst loss previously was an eight-run deficit in a 12-4 loss at West Virginia in late March.

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