Oklahoma defeated No. 2 national seed Georgia Tech 8-7 on Monday on a 10th-inning, walk-off home run by senior first baseman Dayton Tockey to win the NCAA Atlanta Regional and send the Sooners to Super Regionals.
It was the Sooners' seventh win against the Yellow Jackets ever and the second on Georgia Tech's home field in Atlanta in a college baseball interconference series that is just nine games long. The underdog Sooners had to defeat Georgia Tech, the country's second-best offensive team this season, twice in as many days to win the regional championship and advance.
As important as Monday's dramatic win over Georgia Tech was, it was not Oklahoma's biggest win over the Ramblin' Wreck.
The Atlanta Regional final on Monday was the second time in the short-lived series that the two teams have met with NCAA Championship implications. The other was 32 years ago, when Oklahoma and Georgia Tech collided in the championship final of the College World Series.
Sooners' most recent national championship came in a victory over Georgia Tech
On June 11, 1994, Oklahoma and Georgia Tech, seeded No. 4 and No. 2, respectively, in that year's College World Series, were the final teams standing in the eight-team CWS field and met at Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha to decide the national championship.
"We didn't have any superstars," Chip Glass, starting center fielder on that 1994 OU team told reporters after the game then. But what the Sooners did have was a complete team blessed with solid offensive production, outstanding pitching and excellent team defense. Oklahoma was able to beat teams every way possible.
Georgia Tech, on the other hand, had a couple of bona fide future major leaguers in its starting lineup in shortstop Nomar Garciaparra and catcher Jason Varitek, both of whom ended up hitting solo home runs in the game.
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With the score tied 2-2 after three innings, Oklahoma exploded for five runs in the fourth to take a commanding 7-2 lead. A Georgia Tech error allowed two runs to score and a pair of bases-loaded walks and a hit batter brought three more runs home in the inning for the Sooners.
Damon Minor hit one out of the yard for a three-run homer in the seventh inning, stretching the OU advantage to 10-4. And the Sooners weren't done, scoring five more times after that to complete a lopsided 13-5 rout behind a 16-hit attack to pick up Oklahoma's second national championship in college baseball. It came 43 years after the school's first national title in the sport in 1951.
Tim Walton, now the head softball coach at Florida, put the finishing touches on the Oklahoma win in relief, working the final 2.5 innings.
The 1994 national champions trailed in just one of 72 innings in the NCAA Tournament that season.
"We got hot at the right time," said Oklahoma head coach Larry Cochell at the time. "You can't play much better than we played (that day)."
Oklahoma has been back to the College World Series just three other times since (1995, 2010 and 2022), but as far as the championship series, just one other time. That was in 2022, when the Sooners were runners-up to national champion Ole Miss.
Oklahoman staff writer Mike Baldwin had a perfect description of the 1994 Oklahoma baseball team at the time:
"The 1994 Oklahoma Sooners will be remembered for their never-say-die tenacity, but they sit atop the college baseball world because they jumped on teams early and put the pedal to the medal all the way to the national championship."
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