Super Sooners Punch Oklahoma's Ticket to College World Series

For the 12th time in school history, Oklahoma is going to Omaha for the College World Series.

The best cliché a team could have attached to its name in baseball — "one of the hottest teams in the sport right now" — can best describe these Sooners. Pitching, fielding and especially hitting has OU playing its best ball of the season at just the right time.

OU finished off a 13-2 rout of Kansas on Monday, concluding Game 2 of the Lawrence Super Regional that began on Sunday and sending the Sooners back to the CWS for the first time since 2022.

Entering last week's Atlanta Regional, Oklahoma had hit 76 home runs — good for No. 58 in the nation. They then belted 11 homers against The Citadel and Georgia Tech in five games, and sent six more balls out of KU's Hoglund Ballpark over three days to overpower the Jayhawks.

Multiple rain delays Sunday interrupted the Sooners' march. First, rain pushed back first pitch 2 1/2-hours to a 7:30 p.m. start, and at 8:40, the game was paused for lightning and more rain, and was ultimately suspended.

But none of it fazed Skip Johnson's crew as they decimated the Jayhawks to win the program's third Super Regional.

The 2026 Oklahoma Sooners baseball team. | Carson Field, Sooners On SI

OU seized an 8-1 lead before the second stoppage, so Monday's finish felt more like a formality, a coronation, than it did a resumed game.

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Freshman left hander Xander Mercurius got the start on Sunday — the second freshman to start in the Super Regional for OU after Cord Rager's gem in Saturday's 8-1 win — then returned to pitch the fourth inning Monday. He finished his two-day stretch with six strikeouts and two walks with three hits and one run allowed in four innings.

Once play resumed on Monday, Mercurius began to lose the strike zone and only lasted 16 pitches. Johnson recognized his freshman losing his pitches and pulled him for Nate Smithburg, who allowed one run on one hit and a walk over 3 2/3 innings.

From there, Johnson turned it over to the rest of his surging bullpen. Jason Bodin got the third out in the eighth on just one pitch, and Jackson Cleveland finished off a stress-free ninth to clinch it.

With that kind of efficiency on the mound, OU's 8-1 lead carried over from Sunday would have been plenty. But OU's increasingly impressive lineup was hardly finished.

In the bottom of the sixth, Deiten Lachance crushed his team-leading 15th home run of the season to score two runs for a 10-1 lead.

Oklahoma Sooners, Deiten Lachance — Oklahoma catcher Deiten Lachance runs to first base. | Carson Field, Sooners On SI

Dasan Harris echoed Lachance's homer with another two-run shot of his own to stretch the lead to 12-1.

Tyson LeBlanc added a run for KU in the eighth with a solo home run. LeBlanc, one of the Jayhawks' better players, was held in check by the Sooners during the two games until his home run.

OU and Trey Gambill put the lead back to 11 with a solo home run in the bottom of the eighth.

Trey Gambill, Oklahoma Sooners — Trey Gambill heads to first after a hit. | Carson Field, Sooners On S

Kansas was never able to string together successful sequences or take advantage of some early strikeouts after the third inning. Oklahoma played like the better team all weekend and carried it into Monday to sweep the Jayhawks.

Now Johnson has his second Omaha squad. Johnson has been asked to compare this year's "hard to kill" bunch to the 2022 Sooners that played with the same mentality, but Johnson has been reluctant.

Any comparisons now will be even harder to avoid.

The Sooners will meet Alabama on Saturday at 2 p.m. inside Charles Schwab Field in downtown Omaha. OU dropped the regular season series with the Crimson Tide 2-1 in Norman from April 2-4. The Sooners are seeking their third College World Series championship, and their first since 1994.

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