Oklahoma baseball: Sooners come to life against 18th-ranked Bedlam rivals

It was a rejuvenating weekend for Oklahoma baseball.

Sometimes in life when things just aren’t going as you’d like them to the improbable happens and shines a new light on the situation, and with it a brand new outlook.

The Sooners (22-20, 6-9) completed their best Big 12 series of the season over the weekend, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Oklahoma took two out of three against Bedlam rival and 18th-ranked Oklahoma State (25-14, 8-10) for just its second series win in the conference this season. The other series win was early in April over last-place Kansas.

After winning the first two games in the series, Oklahoma came dangerously close to pulling off a series sweep, but Oklahoma State rallied late in Sunday’s series finale and won it 8-7 in 12 innings. The Sooners had broken a 5-5 tie with a couple of runs in the home half of the eighth inning, but the Cowboys came back to tie it with two runs of their own in the ninth and scored what proved to be the winning run on a bloop single in the top half of the 12th.

The Sooners won the series opener on Friday in Stillwater, exploding for 14 runs between the third and fifth innings to claim a 16-2 victory. OU pounded four home runs in the game, including a three-run fence-clearing blast by junior first baseman Tyler Hardman, who finished with six RBI in the game.

OU came from behind in game two, wiping out a on-run deficit with a pair of runs in the seventh on a home run by Brett Squires, his second in the series, and added an insurance run in the eighth for a 5-3 victory. The final two games in the series were played in Norman.

Here are the main takeaways from the 2021 edition of Bedlam baseball

• Fourteen of Oklahoma’s 16 runs in game one were scored after two were out.
• The top four hitters in the OU lineup in Friday’s blowout win — 3B Peyton Graham, DH Jimmy Crooks, 1B Tyler Hardman and RF Brett Squires —  all homered and accounted for 10 of the team’s 14 hits, 11 RBI and 10 runs scored.
• OU redshirt-sophomore starter Wyatt Olds was credited with the win on Friday night. He went 5.0 innings and allowed just one run on one hit. He struck out eight, but also issued eight bases on balls.
• Similar to the Friday night win, the Sooners scored their final three game-deciding runs with two outs.
• Oklahoma’s 16 runs in game one were the most scored by the Sooners in a conference game with Oklahoma State since 1985, a 21-8 OU win.
• The series-opening win in Stillwater was Oklahoma’s first there since 2014, when the Sooners posted a 12-9 win in 18 innings.
• Sooner closer Jason Ruffcorn, a preseason All-American, found himself in a rare six-inning relief appearance in OU’s 5-3 win on Saturday. The senior came in in relief of starter Jake Bennett in the third inning and pitched the rest of the way, giving up four runs on two hits and striking out 10. Ruffcorn was credited with the win, his fourth against one loss.
• This was the first Bedlam conference series played on campus since the 1989 season, which was during the Big Eight era.
• The two Bedlam rivals have played four times this season. Oklahoma State won an earlier game played in Stillwater on March 30, 5-4. The will play a fifth time on My 11 in Tulsa. Only the games this past weekend count in the conference standings.