Oklahoma baseball: Sooners not total strangers to College World Series

It’s been a super spring for the Oklahoma baseball and softball programs.

The Sooner softball team has completed yet another championship run in what has been a fairly regular appearance in the Women’s College World Series, and call it fate or not, but the OU baseball brethren find themselves World Series bound, as well, this year.

You could call it Sooner Magic, since an Oklahoma baseball team hasn’t made an appearance in the CWS in a dozen years, but the journey this season to college baseball’s biggest stage has been in progress now for a couple of months.

Since April 12, when the Oklahoma season record stood at 18-12 and after losing two of three games to Bedlam rival Oklahoma State, the Sooners have been on fire and playing some of the best baseball in the country. Over that period, OU has gone 24-10, including 10-6 against Big 12 opponents.

OU finished in a three-way tie for second place in the regular-season Big 12 standings and beat Texas, which also earned a spot in the eight-team CWS field, to win the conference tournament. The Sooners have won 15 of their last 20 games, including postseason road wind in the Gainesville (Florida) Regional and the series win this past weekend over No. 4-seeded Virginia Tech in the Blacksburg Super Regional.

The last time the Oklahoma Sooners advanced as far in the postseason as the CWS was in 2012. Some of the more familiar names of Sooner players on that Sooner team were Garrett Buechele, Caleb Bushyhead, Camerson Seitzer and Jack Mayfield. Buechele and Seitzer were sons of former major league players and Mayfield in now in his fourth season in the major leagues and second with the Los Angeles Angels.

The 2010 OU team won its opening game in the CWS, defeating South Carolina, but lost to Clemson in the next game and then lost to that same South Carolina team 3-2 in 12 innings in an elimination game.  OU had gone up 2-1 in the top of the 12th inning on a home run by catcher Tyler Ogle. But the Gamecocks scored twice in the bottom of the inning to send the Sooners home with a disappointing defeat.

Among the players on that South Carolina team that went on to win the College World Series in 2010 were current major leaguers Whit Merrifield of the Kansas City Royals and Jackie Bradley Jr of the Boston Red Sox.

Oklahoma has been to the College World Series 10 times in program history and has won two national championships.  The Sooners won their first CWS trophy and accompanying national crown in 1951. The 1994 Oklahoma team went a perfect 8-0 in the NCAA Tournament that season, capped off by four consecutive World Series win to claim the national championship.

Sixteen years went by before Oklahoma made it back to Omaha and the CWS, and 12 years later the Sooners are back again.

The last time OU was in the College World Series, the games were played at Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha, where the CWS was held for some 60 years. In 2011, however, the venue changed to a new constructed TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, which has since been renamed Charles Schwab Field Omaha.

In their 10 previous CWS appearances, the Sooners have played 31 games with an overall record of 15-16. OU’s opening opponent in the 2022 College World Series will be Texas A&M, a program the Sooners are very familiar with from their years together in the Big 12. The date and time won’t be announced until Monday night.

The Aggies (41-18) earned their way to Omaha by winning the Louisville Super Regional. Oklahoma and Texas A&M have not played each other since the 2012 season. The overall series has been a tight one, with the Sooners owning a slight 33-28 advantage and 23-22 as members of the Big 12.

Texas A&M is one of three and potentially four SEC teams that will be in the field for this season’s double-elimination CWS tournament. Auburn and Oregon State are playing a decisive Super Regional contest on Monday. Ironically, OU and Texas will both be joining the SEC no later than 2025. That means that as many as six current and future SEC teams are competing in this year’s College World Series.