Oklahoma baseball: Sooners open season ranked in top 25
By Chip Rouse
With dangerously cold, winter weather blanketing a good portion of the country, its difficult the contemplate the opening weekend of Oklahoma baseball.
But the 2021 college baseball season is here.
The same week that pitchers and catchers began reporting to major league spring training locations, college baseball is set to get started. The Sooners are heading deep into the heart of Texas to Corpus Christi where they hope to get in a three-game series with Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
The 2020 college baseball season was abruptly halted the second week of March a year ago out of concern for the nationwide coronavirus outbreak. Oklahoma was 14-4 at that point and was about a week away from the start of the Big 12 schedule.
Oklahoma ended the abbreviated 2020 season ranked 9th in the country, and they begin this season ranked No. 23 in the Baseball America preseason rankings. Weather-permitting the Sooners will open up with a single game on Saturday against Texas A&M-CC, with a doubleheader scheduled for Sunday.
The Sooners were supposed to open the season at home in Norman with a three-game series against Southern, but those games were cancelled because of major winter weather conditions throughout the southwest. Texas A&M-Corpus Christi stepped in the fill the schedule void. The Islanders, a member of the Southland Conference, were 8-10 last season.
Oklahoma and the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi have met six times previously, with the Sooners winning five of the six.
Head Coach Skip Johnson returns most of roster from a year ago, including preseason All-Americans pitcher Jason Ruffcorn and infielder Peyton Graham. But he also loses three-fourths of his starting pitiching rotation with the departure of Cade Cavalli, Dane Acker and Levi Prater.
Ruffcorn, a redshirt senior, saved five games in seven appearances last season, allowing just three hits and striking out 12 in eight innings of relief. Graham batted .358 with 41 total bases, 10 RBI and a .612 slugging percentage in his freshman season.
Also back for another year are redshirt junior Tanner Tredaway, who led the team in batting average (.378), RBI (14) and slugging percentage (.689), redshirt junior Tyler Hardman and senior team leader Brandon Zaragoza, who is beginning his fifth season as the Sooner shortstop.
The Sooners should be in excellent shape offensively, but the starting pitching will be a bit of a question mark, at least to begin the season.
Oklahoma follows up its Corpus Christi trip with midweek games next week against Stephen F. Austin and UT Arlington before heading to Round Rock, Texas, next weekend for the Round Rock Classic featuring Auburn and Texas A&M out of the SEC and Baylor from the Big 12.
The Sooners are picked to finish fifth in the Big 12 this season in the annual preseason poll conducted by the league coaches. Texas Tech is the conference favorite, receiving seven of the nine first-place votes. No. 2 TCU and No. 3 Texas received the remaining two first-place votes.