These Sooners knew they were national champions long before anyone else did

Everyone else might have been in shock that the Oklahoma Sooners won the national title after an unthinkable run, but they sure weren't. It had been all in the plans since February.

"We were told by one of the coaches in February that we were gonna be the 2026 national champions. He wasn't lying," first baseman Dayton Tockey told The Oklahoman's Colton Sulley in the midst of celebration. "We always had the faith. We knew we always had the players. Sometimes the season didn't go our way, but at the end of the day, it did. ....

"We're the best team. And everyone should think that now. But we've thought that since February."

The college baseball world was shocked by Oklahoma's CWS run but no one in the dugout was

Moments after the unseeded Sooners manhandled No. 5 national seed North Carolina 13-2 in Game 3 of the championship series at the Men's College World Series to win the national title, there was a story shared during the postgame press conference that made it clear this run wasn't the least bit surprising to the team that accomplished it. Even with all the losses between February and hoisting that trophy.

After going 33-21 during the regular season with a losing conference record after dropping four SEC series in a row, the Sooners were sent to the Atlanta Regional to deal with No. 2 national seed Georgia Tech at home. That was over three weeks and a lifetime ago, but even then, these Sooners knew what was ahead when it looked like there was no chance of them surviving the regional.

The Sooners not only had to slay the Yellow Jackets twice in Atlanta with no loss to give, but had to mount two monstrous comebacks that were just a preview of what the team was capable of.

Georgia Tech had dug the Sooners' grave with an 8-2 lead in the fourth inning. Right then, if not long before, fans had given up any sort of hope of Oklahoma getting out of regionals, let alone winning a national title. The suggestion of Omaha during that fourth inning was laughable. If anyone tells you otherwise, they're lying.

But then the Sooners exploded for eight runs in a single frame and ultimately scored 13 unanswered to not only survive but thrive. In the midst of that comeback, there was actual laughter in the OU dugout.

Were they in disbelief at what they were doing? Or were they realizing just how fun the national title run ahead of them was going to be?

"Oh, they could believe it," OU head coach Skip Johnson said as a national champion weeks later. "I promise you, because they believed it. There's no doubt about that. They wasn't giving in."

Read more: Sooner Nation is throwing the party nobody thought it would get to have after CWS title

Fans, media, heck, even I would have written this team was illogical if at that point they said out loud they'd go from losing seven of 10 to national champions. But you can scream whatever you want once you're at the top of the mountain. And this team always knew it was the best in college baseball as the rest of us found out.

"I think we knew that the talent was always in the room," MCWS Most Outstanding Player Jaxon Willits said. "And that's something that Skip and all the coaches preached to us from day one in the fall, is that this group of guys is special. Whether we were playing well or not, we believed that we had the talent in the room to go out and win a national championship. ...

"And when things were going our way, we took it one pitch at a time. And at the end of the day we had success with it. And we kind of got hot at the right time, and now we're national champions."

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