OU Baseball: Oklahoma Loses Rain-Affected Series Finale vs No. 11 West Virginia
Coming up short in the series finale.
After winning the middle game on Saturday, Oklahoma concluded their three-game set with No. 11 West Virginia on Sunday afternoon at Monongalia County Ballpark in Morgantown, WV.
In a game that took nearly seven hours to complete thanks to a lengthy rain delay, the Sooners (26-22, 10-11) saw their series winning streak snapped as they dropped the rubber match to the Mountaineers (36-12, 13-5) 9-3.
With a gloomy forecast on the docket, OU head coach Skip Johnson elected to hold back his usual Sunday starter James Hitt in favor of reliever Carter Campbell, who was making his first career start on the mound.
While the thinking certainly paid off, Hitt entered after the rain delay and was effective, the results didn’t for Campbell.
The reliable bullpen arm struggled in the new role, getting tagged for five earned runs across just 1.2 innings of work.
West Virginia then plated another run in the bottom of the third before the stoppage of play came in due to a hefty downpour of rain.
After a delay of over three hours, the game resumed and would see the Sooners fight there way back into making things interesting.
Trailing 7-0 in the fifth, Oklahoma struck for three runs with Anthony Mackenzie scoring on a fielding error and with Dakota Harris and Kendall Pettis each picking up RBI singles.
Just like that, the WVU lead had been sliced down to 7-3.
But, unfortunately for Oklahoma, that would be the last time they dented the scoreboard, as the West Virginia bullpen locked things down the rest of the way.
Mountaineers relievers Maxx Yehl and David Hagaman teamed up to blank the Sooners in the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth innings to end the game with the WVU offense tacking on a couple more runs along the way.
The loss moves the Sooners back below .500 in Big 12 play by a game and ends a short streak of series wins in recent weeks.
However, OU still saw a nice uptick in RPI thanks to playing a top-15 team and winning a game on the road - still overall improving their NCAA Tournament resume heading into the final couple of weeks of the regular season.
Oklahoma will now have some time to rest up a bit without a midweek game, not getting back to action until next Friday for the first of a three-game series at Gonzaga.