Limping Oklahoma Team set to Open SEC Tournament Against Middling LSU Squad

The Sooners lost their last four series of the regular series, but they should be safely in the NCAA Tournament field.

Oklahoma outfielder Jason Walk celebrates after hitting a home run against Tennessee. | Carson Field, Sooners On S

The Sooners don’t have much to gain or lose in Hoover, AL, this year.

Oklahoma (32-20 overall, 14-16 SEC) enters the SEC Tournament — which begins Tuesday and concludes Sunday — as the conference’s No. 11 seed.

The Sooners are safely in the field for the NCAA Tournament, but they likely have no chance to host a regional after losing four series in a row to finish the regular season.

OU will battle 14-seeded LSU on Tuesday in the first round of the tourney.

Opening with the Tigers

Jason Walk heads back to the dug out. | Carson Field, Sooners On SI

The Sooners and Tigers have already squared off in 2026, as Oklahoma took two games of three in Baton Rouge in March.

That series got off to a rocky start for OU. The Sooners allowed the Tigers to score five runs over the first two innings before LSU eventually won 7-1.

Oklahoma, though, didn’t let its dismal Game 1 performance carry into Games 2 and 3. The Sooners won 4-2 in the second game before rallying and earning a 4-3 win in the third game to take the series.

Since then, neither team has played its best baseball.

Oklahoma won only two of its final eight series of the regular season. Those two series wins came against Vanderbilt and Missouri, which are 12th and 16th in the SEC standings, respectively.

LSU has fared even worse.

Though the Tigers followed up their series loss to the Sooners with victories over Kentucky and Tennessee, they got swept five times — against Ole Miss, Texas A&M, Mississippi State, Georgia and Florida — over the last month and a half of the regular season.

All of this is to say that neither team comes into this game scorching.

Rest of the bracket

Oklahoma's Deiten Lachance tries to tag out Texas A&M's Terrence Kiel. | Carson Field / Sooners On S

Georgia ran away with the SEC regular-season title, as the Bulldogs finished their conference slate with a 23-7 record.

UGA is one of four teams that will get a double bye at the SEC Tournament, along with Texas, Texas A&M and Alabama, which are seeded Nos. 2 through 4, respectively.

If Oklahoma is able to defeat LSU on Tuesday, the Sooners will battle Auburn in the second round on Wednesday. OU lost two games of three against the Tigers in April.

The Sooners would then battle Texas A&M if they were able to win their first two games. OU won two of three against the Aggies at home in March, but the teams have gone in opposite directions since that series.

National implications

Oklahoma catcher Brendan Brock | Carson Field, Sooners On SI

As mentioned, OU is likely safely in the field, regardless of how things go in Hoover. But the Sooners also are likely out of the picture for hosting, even if they were to win the conference tournament.

With a couple of wins at the SEC Tournament, the Sooners could cement themselves as a two-seed in regionals. But with an ugly Round 1 loss to LSU, OU could see itself fall to a three-seed.

The good news for OU is that SEC teams cannot be placed in regionals with each other. 

This means that the Sooners will be safe from some of the conference and the nation’s best teams like Georgia, Texas, Texas A&M, Auburn and Alabama for at least the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament.

Baseball America currently has the Sooners as the No. 23 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament. The outlet placed them in the Tallahassee Regional alongside Florida State, Troy and Rider.

Oklahoma is now unranked in the D1Baseball and Baseball America polls, but the Sooners still remain at No. 21 in RPI.