OU Baseball: Three Things to Watch in Oklahoma’s Opener at the Shriner’s College Baseball Showdown
NORMAN — The Oklahoma Sooners 2024 baseball team opens its season Friday in the Shriner’s Baseball Classic at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.
Skip Johnson’s seventh team as head coach will play Oregon on FridayThe at 3 p.m.; preseason No. 9 Tennessee on Saturday at 7 p.m.; and Nebraska on Sunday at 10:30 a.m. The Sooners will take a short drive to Dallas Baptist University on Tuesday, Feb. 20 at 6:30 p.m.
Here’s a few notes ahead of the Sooners’ season-opening slate.
‘Bryce can fall out of a tree and get two hits’
That’s what Johnson had to say about returning junior outfielder Bryce Madron, who was named to the preseason All-Big 12 team.
“Every day [Bryce] is out there, he’s like a professional. He goes about his business. He works extremely hard. He understands this offense. I think the first three or four intrasquads, he had like 5 RBIs,” Johnson said.
Madron grew up 16 miles from Norman in Blanchard and was recruited to OU from Cowley College the same season the Sooners appeared in the College World Series final and lost to Ole Miss in 2021. Madron joined the Sooners the following season and made an immediate impact; Madron played in all 60 games as a junior and hit .320 and a team-high 12 home runs, 15 doubles, 51 RBI, 58 runs and 61 walks. He could very well be the best player Johnson’s got coming back from a 32-28 campaign in 2023.
“He can play right, center or left [field], that’s what’s good about him. And his leadership role’s been really huge in the locker room,” Johnson said.
The outfield
When asked last week how his defense would fare this season, Johnson replied, “I think we’ll be pretty good defensively with our whole outfield coming back.”
It’s one of the best returning group on the field for the Sooners. Both senior Kendall Pettis and John Spikerman were part of the Sooners’ 2022 CWS run. Including Madron, all three were Big 12 honorable mentions last year.
“It makes our job 100 times easier knowing we’ve got eight guys behind us that are going to give it out to try to get that out for you,” OU pitcher Will Carsten said. “Of course, when you’ve got a veteran outfield with Spikerman, Pettis, Madron, it make our job 100 times easier.”
Familiar territory
The Sooners have won 11 games at Globe Life Field since it opened in 2020 — second in college baseball only to TCU.
In a Thursday interview with Johnson, D1Baseball’s Joe Healy joked that “the only team that’s played more games in that stadium than the Oklahoma Sooners is the Texas Rangers.”
“All these guys talk about wanting to play in the big leagues. Well, we get to play in a big league ballpark,” Johnson told Healy. “No. 2, it’s a first-class facility. . . It’s a big environment, the ceiling’s really high, it’s indoors. Those things are always tougher to play in.”
The setting could be advantageous to the Sooners’ pitching staff.
“It’s a graveyard,” Carsten said. “You’ve got to really get one up to get it going. I think also having a year of experience under my belt, you can kind of get over the bright lights and the big league stadium, so now it’s just you look at it as another game.”
“You get one up there, it was deserved,” fellow pitcher Carter Campbell said.
Lefty Braden Davis will get the season-opening start against the Ducks. The junior from Keller, Texas went 5-4 last year at Sam Houston State and posted an ERA of 2.78.
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