Oklahoma baseball: 10-year anniversary of a special Sooner season

Oklahoma baseball has been to the College World Series 10 times, but its also been 10 years since the Sooners’ last appearance.

This is the time of year when college baseball teams typically start gearing up for postseason play. Not this season, though, because the 2020 college season was cancelled after one month of play because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Oklahoma was off to a strong start with a 14-4 record, a top-25 ranking and wins over a couple of teams (Arkansas and LSU) ranked among the top 15 teams in the country.

We’ll never know how things would have ultimately turned out this season, but things were certainly very promising early on.

The 2010 season was also a very special time. Oklahoma won 50 games that season and was on the losing end just 18 times. The 50-win season was significant because it has only happened twice in program history (1994 was the only other time).

Oklahoma did not win the Big 12 regular season in 2010. The team finished second with a 15-10 league record, but eight games back of the Texas Longhorns. But then came a new season and a new beginning in the postseason.

The Sooners hosted the NCAA Norman regional and swept through Oral Roberts and North Carolina twice to advance to the Charlottesville Super Regional against No. 5 overall seed Virginia. Oklahoma fell 3-2 in the opening game of the double-elimination Super Regional and faced elimination, needing to win two games against the home team Cavaliers to continue on its journey to Omaha, Nebraska and the College World Series.

Ten years ago was the last time Oklahoma appeared in the College World Series.

OU won 10-7 in Game 2 against Virginia and then finished things off with a resounding 11-0 shutout in the winner-take-all decisive championship final to punch its ticket to the CWS.

Coach Sunny Golloway’s Sooners were not newcomers to the CWS. They had been there nine times before and had won it all in 1951 and 1994.

South Carolina was Oklahoma’s first CWS opponent in 2010, and the Sooners prevailed 4-3  in an opening-round contest that took over nine hours to complete because of a couple of lengthy rain delays. The game was scheduled to start at 2:30 p.m. but didn’t actually get underway for good until 11:30 that night.

The first-round victory advanced OU to the winners’ bracket, where Clemson stood in the way as the next obstacle. The Sooners weren’t as fortunate against the ACC Atlantic Division champions, with Clemson winning 6-3.

That set up an elimination game rematch with South Carolina. The Gamecocks had remained alive after the first-round loss to the Sooners by defeating top-seeded Arizona State, knocking the Sun Devils out of the championship.

Oklahoma held a 2-1 lead over South Carolina in the bottom of the 12th inning. The Sooners were one strike away from advancing to the semifinal round when Jackie Bradley, Jr., who now plays for the Boston Red Sox, laced a single scoring the tying run.

Two batters later, Brady Thomas stroked a walk-off run-scoring single, and just like that, Oklahoma was headed home, while South Carolina would go on to defeat UCLA for the 2010 College World Series title and the national championship.

Who knows what would have happened had OU gotten Bradley to make the final out. Instead, South Carolina was able to pull out the miracle win, which turned out to be extremely fortuitous.

Some of the OU stars from that 50-win seasons were outfielder Max White, infielders Garrett Buechele and Jack Mayfield and pitchers Bobby Shore and Michael Rocha.

The Sooners have not been back to the CWS since that fateful outcome on June 24, 2010.