Sooner Baseball Looks To Keep Rolling While Hosting Oral Roberts

The Oklahoma Sooners won their first conference baseball series over the weekend when they took the final two games of their series at Texas Tech. The wins not only gave them their first two notches in the in the conference wins column but also puts Oklahoma on a streak where they've won four of their last five games. Now the question is whether they can keep their mojo going as they host in-state rival Oral Roberts?

The Sooners own a 32-29 series edge over the Golden Eagles but ORU won the last meeting win the two teams hooked up in last season's Ft. Worth Regional. Oral Roberts returns 17 players from last year's squad that finished with an 39-22 overall record.

To this point ORU is 10-12 on the season and 3-7 when playing away from Tulsa. They are led in batting by Jared Schelhuber who is sporting a .300 average with five home runs and 12 RBIs. He's the only player averaging .300 or better from the plate but Cam Schiller, who is batting .292, leads the team in home runs (7) and RBIs (21). As a team the Golden Eagles are batting .248.

ORU has yet to announce a starter for this game but a leading candidate could be Kurt Giller who has a 1-3 record in six starts this season. Giller currently has a 5.46 ERA and has struck out 31 batters while also giving up 31 hits. Alec Smith, Joe Spring and Matt Rush are also possibilities as starters for ORU. The Golden Eagles pitching staff has a respectable 3.22 collective ERA.

Oklahoma has Cale Coshow listed as their starter. We learned last week that being listed as the starter isn't always an indication that you'll actually be a starter when Damien Magnifico was scratched from starting the Air Force games. Cashow has a 3.60 ERA and a 1-0 record in his only start of the season. He has given up five hits and two runs while also striking out four batters during his five innings of work this season.

Brian Brightwell is the story of the week for Oklahoma's offense. A freshman from Oklahoma City, Brightwell started two games over the weekend against Texas Tech and is batting .500. The Sooners also have six other players hitting .300 or better but could use some more discipline (or better coaching) while running the bases.

First pitch is scheduled for 6:30 tonight.