Skip to main content
All Sooners

National Champs! Oklahoma Dominates North Carolina to Win College World Series

The Sooners are the best team in college baseball thanks to another emphatic postseason victory and the indefatigable will of a team and a coach who promised, "we're not gonna quit."
John Hoover|
The Oklahoma Sooners celebrate the national championship following a 13-2 win over the North Carolina Tar Heels at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha.
The Oklahoma Sooners celebrate the national championship following a 13-2 win over the North Carolina Tar Heels at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha. | Steven Branscombe-Imagn Images

OMAHA, NE — Oklahoma is back.

Back on top of the college baseball world for the first time in 32 years. The underdog Sooners are the 2026 national champions.

OU dominated No. 5 national seed North Carolina on Monday night in a winner-take-all showdown at Charles Schwab Field, a 13-2 wire-to-wire, dominating victory that places coach Skip Johnson and this team among historic company in Norman.

It’s OU’s first baseball national championship since Larry Cochell guided the 1994 Sooners to the mountaintop, and it’s the program’s third crown overall, joining also the 1951 squad.

It’s also Oklahoma’ first national crown in a men’s sport since 2018. That was men’s gymnastics, one of nine for Mark Williams’ program. The golf team won it all in 2017. Football in 2000 was the only other men’s sport to win a national championship in this century.

And it's the seventh consecutive national championship for the Southeastern Conference — a league in which OU has had membership for just two short seasons now.

But these Sooners didn’t win the SEC — didn’t even contend. Instead, they finished with a losing conference record for the second year in a row, lost their last four league series and finished tied for 11th in the standings and went 0-1 to a middling LSU team in the conference tournament.

But then the postseason began, and destiny took over. 

Much like 1994, when Cochell was carried off the Rosenblatt Stadium grass on the shoulders of his players while holding the trophy over his head, the final out touched off an emotion celebration and memorable dogpile that culminated with Johnson carrying off the 2026 National Championship trophy.

Junior shortstop Jaxon Willits was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player after another stellar performance at the plate and in the field. Willits’ likely final game as a Sooner was a three-hit, two-walk masterclass, which included a bases-loaded, two-run single in the decisive fourth inning.

Jaxon Willits Oklahoma Sooners College World Series
Oklahoma Sooners shortstop Jaxon Willits (7) was Most Outstanding Player at the College World Series. | Steven Branscombe-Imagn Images

Willits’ 13 hits this postseason shatters the program’s previous mark of nine. He finished the postseason hitting .451 and batted .520 in the CWS.

OU finishes the season at 43-23, while North Carolina ends at 54-14-1.

The Sooners’ postseason run was simply historic. They took down No. 2 national seed Georgia Tech, No. 15 Kansas, No. 7 Alabama, No. 3 Georgia twice and No. 5 UNC twice. OU’s nine wins against national seeds set an all-time NCAA record.

OU opened the championship series with a 9-3 victory over Carolina on Saturday, but the Tar Heels evened things with a 6-2 win on Sunday — a win that ended the Sooners’ nine-game winning streak.

The Tar Heels came into Monday with a more accomplished pitching staff, but their reputation this time didn’t hold up.

Skip Johnson Oklahoma Sooners College World Series
Oklahoma head coach Skip Johnson holds up the national championship trophy after beating North Carolina 13-2 on Monday. | Steven Branscombe-Imagn Images

OU — with nine blowout wins in their 13 NCAA Tournament games — got their hot bats going once more against the Tar Heels’ talented staff, chasing starter Jackson Rose in the third inning, long relief ace Walker McDuffie after just two outs, and ACC Freshman of the Year Caden Glauber after just seven pitches.

North Carolina was 29-0 this season in games that Glauber pitched, but they’re 29-1 now.

Glauber twice declared in Sunday night’s postgame press conference that North Carolina was “the best team in the college baseball,” but the Sooners emphatically proved otherwise.

Sign up to our free newsletter and follow us on Facebook and X for the latest news.

OU had 14 hits, their 31st game in double digits this season. The Sooners jumped on top early with a pair of runs in the second inning. The Sooners scored first in every game in Omaha, and won five of the six.

Brendan Brock opened with a single but was forced at second by Dasan Harris’ ground ball to third. Dayton Tockey singled, and 9-hole hitter Kyle Branch delivered an RBI single that sent Tockey to third. Tockey then raced home on a wild pitch to make it 2-0.

In the third, OU made it 3-0 when Willits doubled with one out and Brock singled him home with two out.

UNC got that one back in the bottom of the inning on Gavin Gallaher’s RBI single off OU starter Nick Wesloski.

Wesloski, a freshman, got his third postseason start and was solid early, but Johnson took him out with one out in the third. He went 2 1/3 innings and gave up just one run on five hits and a walk with three strikeouts.

But Wesloski was replaced by former starter-turned-long reliever L.J. Mercurius, who coasted on the mound and fueled Oklahoma’s strong finish.

Mercurius (7-7) pitched 5 2/3 innings of relief before giving way in the ninth to closer Jackson Cleveland, who pitched a scoreless ninth by striking out the side. Mercurius scattered just five hits, allowed one run, struck out five and didn't walk anyone. He needed just 79 pitches to set his team's place in OU lore.

The Tar Heels staged a rally in the bottom of the second, but right fielder Dasan Harris made sure it never happened.

Erik Paulsen led off with a single, and Carter French reached on a two-out single. Rom Kellis smoked a hot shot into right, and it looked like Paulsen would score easily from second. Instead, Harris fired a bullet to nail French at third base — before Paulsen crossed the plate — for the third out. 

OU then took that momentum and broke it open with three runs in the fourth.

Branch, Jason Walk and Camden Johnson each walked to load the bases and chase McDuffie for Glauber. But Glauber also walked Deiten Lachance to force in a run and make it 4-1. After Willits’ two-run single made it 6-1, Glauber’s day was over.

Tockey hit a solo home run to lead off the fifth inning, his sixth of the NCAA Tournament and his first in Omaha. That built OU’s lead to 7-1.

The Sooners extended that to 9-1 in the sixth.

After Willits walked and Brock reached on an error, Harris singled to load the bases. Branch delivered again, this time a two-out single to score Willits and Brock to put the Sooners up eight runs.

UNC plated a single run in the seventh off Mercurius, but it was too little, too late for the Tar Heels.

Of course the Sooners weren’t done scoring.

Willits walked on a full count to lead off the eighth — his fifth time on base — but Trey Gambill grounded him out at second. Brock walked — also on a full count — and Harris’ single to left scored Gambill for a 10-2 lead.

Branch, who finished the decisive game with three hits and six RBIs, kept the hit parade rolling when he blasted a three-run home run that made it 13-2 — the exact same score of OU's last national championship in football. It also matched the Sooners' total runs scored in the championship victory over Georgia Tech in 1994, a 13-5 triumph that immortalized Cochell and his scrappy, rag-tag bunch of transfers, upper classmen and talented freshmen.

Johnson's team has very much the same makeup, the same chemistry.

And now they also have very much the same trophy, the same place in history.

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Loading recommendations... Please wait while we load personalized content recommendations

Published | Modified
John E. Hoover
JOHN HOOVER

John is an award-winning journalist whose work spans five decades in Oklahoma, with multiple state, regional and national awards as a sportswriter at various newspapers. During his newspaper career, John covered the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma State Cowboys, the Arkansas Razorbacks and much more. In 2016, John changed careers, migrating into radio and launching a YouTube channel, and has built a successful independent media company, DanCam Media. From there, John has written under the banners of Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Fan Nation and a handful of local and national magazines while hosting daily sports talk radio shows in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and statewide. John has also spoken on Capitol Hill in Oklahoma City in a successful effort to put more certified athletic trainers in Oklahoma public high schools. Among the dozens of awards he has won, John most cherishes his national "Beat Writer of the Year" from the Associated Press Sports Editors, Oklahoma's "Best Sports Column" from the Society of Professional Journalists, and Two "Excellence in Sports Medicine Reporting" Awards from the National Athletic Trainers Association. John holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from East Central University in Ada, OK. Born and raised in North Pole, Alaska, John played football and wrote for the school paper at Ada High School in Ada, OK. He enjoys books, movies and travel, and lives in Broken Arrow, OK, with his wife and two kids.

Share on XFollow johnehoover
Home/Baseball