This college baseball season has included plenty of lows for the Oklahoma Sooners, but things almost hit rock bottom on Saturday morning as they finally started NCAA Tournament action.
The Sooners needed a comeback to avoid an upset and disastrous start to the NCAA Tournament and get past The Citadel 8-3 in the second game of the Atlanta Regional that was initially slated to start on Friday before a lengthy weather delay pushed first pitch to early the next day. The score makes it seem like the Sooners had more control than they actually did.
Sooners fight off The Citadel but won't have same luck vs. Georgia Tech
The Citadel struck first with a run in the second inning before the Sooners eventually answered with one of their own in the third. The Bulldogs really put the pressure on OU in the fourth inning while taking a 3-1 lead. It could have been much worse, though, as OU starter Cord Rager notched a strike out for the final out with a runner in scoring position at second. The Sooners also managed to get an out at home the play before. A nearly 5-1 deficit at that point might have been insurmountable.
That was enough to wake the Sooners up and they took control from there. OU took its first lead with three runs the very next frame as the home team. The Sooners then added more insurance with one in the fifth, two in the seventh and another in the eighth. In reality, though, it should have been even more in hand considering four times the Sooners were out because of errors on the bases.
The Sooners, once fighting to host their own regional in Norman, headed into the NCAA Tournament struggling mightily having gone 3-7 in their last 10 games. But a loss to The Citadel would have been shocking and unacceptable no matter how any OU team had been performing. The Citadel, with a 35-25 record, needed a miracle run in the Southern Conference Tournament as the 5-seed to even get into the NCAA Tournament.
Read more: What it will take for Oklahoma to get back to early season form for NCAA Tournament run
The Atlanta Regional would already be hard enough for the Sooners to navigate through, especially with weather throwing off schedules and rhythm, but it would have become nearly impossible with an opening loss to The Citadel that would have had OU almost immediately playing again in an elimination game.
The Sooners will still have to play a second game in the same day thanks to that weather delay against host and No. 2 national seed Georgia Tech, which absolutely hammered UIC 22-5 in the first game on Friday. The Yellow Jackets already had 17 runs on the board by the end of the fourth inning, not even halfway through the game.
It doesn't matter who was in the other dugout, that outing was still proof Georgia Tech's bats are hotter than just about anyone else's while inconsistent pitching has been the Sooners' biggest downfall this season. The Sooners won't be able to overcome another slow start against a team like Georgia Tech.
The Sooners will play Georgia Tech at 5 p.m. CT Saturday on ESPN+.
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