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OU Baseball: Oklahoma Cruises Past Cal State Northridge for 10-0 Start

Dayton Tockey's four hits and Malachi Witherspoon's steady starting pitching was more than enough in the Sooners' 10-2 victory.
Guerin Emig|
Oklahoma first baseman Dayton Tockey
Oklahoma first baseman Dayton Tockey | John E. Hoover / Sooners On SI

It was steady-as-they go for unbeaten Oklahoma pm Saturday in a routine 10-2 wipeout of Cal State Northridge at L. Dale Mitchell Park. 

The Sooners spread 15 hits among eight of the nine hitters in Skip Johnson’s lineup to improve to 10-0 on the season. First baseman Dayton Tockey had four of those hits, drove in a pair of runs and scored three times in his best offensive game of the young season.

OU starter Malachi Witherspoon allowed one run and six hits over his five innings on the mound, good enough for the win and a 2-0 record on the year. 

Witherspoon’s best feature was his moxie. He worked around a bases-loaded, nobody-out jam in the top of the second inning thanks to a pair of strikeouts and a groundout to second baseman Kyle Branch. 

CSUN loaded the bases with one out in the fourth and got on the board thanks to Elijah Fairchild’s RBI single. Witherspoon escaped further damage by retiring Roberto Gonzalez and Colton Boardman, the first and third hitters in CSUN’s order.

Oklahoma Sooners

The Matadors’ only other run came against OU reliever Jaden Barfield in the top of the eighth. They stranded 12 runners in falling to 2-6 on the season.

The Sooners had much more success delivering with their bats, scoring in six of their eight innings against CSUN starter Noah Rinehart and four relievers. 

Jaxon Willits followed Jason Walk’s leadoff single and stolen base with an RBI single to right field to shove OU ahead 1-0 in the bottom of the first.

Tockey’s triple off the base of the right-field wall led off the second. He scored on Dawson Willis’ perfectly placed bunt toward first base. 

Trey Gambill opened the bottom of the third with a line single to right field. He stole second – one of five OU steals on the afternoon – and came home on Tockey’s two-out single.

After CSUN got within 3-1 in the top of the fourth, OU designated hitter Easton Carmichael drove a two-out, two-run single up the middle in the bottom half to help retake control. 

As if there was any doubt, Tockey’s RBI single and Scott Mulder’s run-scoring groundout in the bottom of the fifth pushed OU ahead 7-1.

A two-out rally in the bottom of the seventh produced the Sooners’ final three runs. Tockey and Mulder singled to get it started. Willis and Walk followed with back-to-back doubles to right field.

OU shoots for a three-game weekend sweep of the Matadors, and an 11-0 start to the season, Sunday at 1 p.m.

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Guerin Emig
GUERIN EMIG

Guerin is a 25-year Oklahoma sports journalist. He spent the bulk of that time with the Tulsa World, where he partnered with Sooners On SI publisher John Hoover on the OU beat before eventually becoming a columnist. He lives in Tulsa with his wife, Christy, his sweetheart from Booker T. Washington's Class of ‘86.

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