Oklahoma baseball: Sooners drop opener but rebound to win series over Rider
By Chip Rouse
After dropping the series opener against, the Oklahoma baseball lumber and pitching came alive over the weekend and the Sooners rolled to a couple of weekend wins to take the series over the visiting Rider University Broncs out of New Jersey.
Rider broke up a 3-3 tie game with a single run in the seventh and a pair of runs in the eighth to take game one on Friday 6-3. The Sooners had plenty of scoring opportunities with 11 hits but couldn’t get the base runners home, leaving 13 stranded. Junior first baseman Anthony Mackenzie collected four hits in five at bats, but only one of those hits, all singles, produced a run.
Kale Davis started game one for the Sooners and went 5 1/3 innings but did not factor in the decision. Reliever Carter Campbell picked up the loss, allowing two runs on three hits in two innings of work.
The Sooner offense was more productive in game two on Saturday, scoring seven times on nine hits and leaving just nine runners on base. Mackenzie continued his hot hitting duplicating his four-for-five performance from the day before. Catcher Easton Carmichael and shortstop Dakota Harris both had a pair of hits and combined for five of the Sooners’ seven runs.
Junior right-handed starter Will Carsten pitched five strong innings, giving up just one run on three hits and striking out four to earn his first win in an Oklahoma uniform.
Sunday was the best of the three games as far as Oklahoma was concerned. Two of OU’s returning players from last season’s national championship runner-up team, sophomores John Spikerman and Jackson Nicklaus, had big games as OU rolled to an 11-1 run-rule victory to take the series two games to one.
Nicklaus tripled, homered and drove in three runs, and Spikerman doubled in two runs in the fifth inning to spark the Sooner offense. Unlike the previous two games in the series, OU left just one runner stranded in the shortened seven-inning contest. The win went to graduate transfer Braxton Douthit, who went six complete innings, allowing just one run and two hits, striking out six and walking two.
Mackenzie added another hit on Sunday, completing the weekend with nine hits in 13 plate appearances and raised his team-best batting average to .548.
The Sooners are 4-4 to open the season and head south this week to North Texas, where they will play a midweek game at UT Arlington on Wednesday. Then it’s over to Frisco, Texas, for the Frisco College Baseball Classic and weekend games with California (Friday), Mississippi State (Saturday) and Ohio State (Sunday).