Better Later than Sooner? That surely seems true for Oklahoma baseball
By Rick Cleveland | Originally published by Mississippi Today
Oklahoma’s baseball Sooners turned out to be the Oklahoma Laters and perhaps the best illustration ever of the old saying that late is far better than never.
After a pedestrian-at-best regular season – which included a losing record (14-16) in the Southeastern Conference – Oklahoma won college baseball’s national championship Monday night by trouncing North Carolina 13-2.
The achievement becomes all the more improbable when you consider Oklahoma finished in a tie for 11th place in the 16-team Southeastern Conference, behind both Ole Miss and Mississippi State. Furthermore, Oklahoma ended the regular season ranked 136th of 308 Division I teams in batting average,143rd in runs per game, 94th in home runs and 91st in earned run average.
On March 17, the same Oklahoma team that would win the national championship traveled to Hammond, Louisiana, to play Southeastern Louisiana in advance of a three-game weekend series with SEC rival LSU. The Southeastern Lions of the Southland Conference used five different pitchers to throw a four-hit shutout of the Sooners. The Southeastern victory over Oklahoma was sandwiched between Southeastern losses to Stephen F. Austin and McNeese State.
Perhaps the most incredible stat of all: Oklahoma was mercy-ruled on five different occasions during the regular season. Since when does an eventual national champion lose games by scores like 15-3, 14-0, 14-4, 13-2 and 12-2? Since now would be the correct answer.
This is just one more example of what makes baseball different than the NCAA’s other championship sports and what endears college baseball to so many of us. In baseball, on any given day, anybody really can beat anybody else. Football and basketball coaches say it; baseball coaches live it.
I mean, can you imagine an 11th place football or basketball team in the Big Ten or SEC winning a national championship? No, it just doesn’t happen.
We know all about unpredictability of baseball in Mississippi. When Ole Miss won the national championship in 2022, the Rebels finished with a 14-16 SEC record and were famously the last team to get in to the tournament. They then proceeded to do just what Oklahoma did this year, which is beat everybody up in the post-season. They won a Regional at Miami and a Super Regional at Hattiesburg and then beat Arkansas early in the College World Series to advance to the best-of-three championship series. Remember? Yes, well then you should also remember who Ole Miss beat 10-3 and 4-2 to win the 2022 Natty. That’s right: Oklahoma.
Mississippi State had a much more conventional run to its national championship the year before. In 2021, State finished 40-13 (20-10 in SEC) during the regular season. But the Bulldogs were anything but hot going into the NCAA Tournament, having gone two and out during the SEC Tournament, losing 13-1 to Florida and 12-2 to Tennessee in back-to-back stinkers.
That 12-2 loss to the Vols came on May 27. On June 30, State waxed Vanderbilt 9-0 to win the national championship.
Again, Oklahoma’s path to its third national championship was much more like Ole Miss’ in 2022. Four years ago, there was all kinds of squawking from all over the U.S. about the Rebels even getting into the tournament with a losing conference record. But the Rebels, collectively, got smoking hot.
That’s exactly what happened with Oklahoma this year to the surprise of nearly everyone, especially the oddsmakers. The Sooners were facing 66-to-1 odds, the same as Ole Miss, to win the tournament. Mississippi State had much better odds at 17-to-1. Southern Miss had odds of 50-to-1.
But Oklahoma went to Atlanta for a regional and knocked off No. 2 national seed Georgia Tech, trailing 7-3 in the championship game before rallying for victory. They then took two straight from Kansas to win at Super Regional. And you know what happened at Omaha. The Sooners – or Laters, as it were – outscored opponents by a collective 48-16 to win it all. They dominated.
College baseball rarely fails to surprise. How can you not love it?
This article was originally published by Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Source: Original Article
