Cut me some slack on this one. It was cold and rainy!
The Sooners have won back-to-back conference series but now face a monumental task when they travel to College Station to take on fourth ranked Texas A&M. The Aggies are coming off a 2-1 series win over Missouri and own a 4-2 conference record. They return 19 players from last year's team that earned a trip to Omaha.
The Sooners will rely heavily on their starting pitching to shutdown a Texas A&M squad that leads the Big XII in batting average at .312. Led by Tyler Naquin (.423) and Mikey Reynolds (.374) the Aggies have seven players hitting .300 or better. Naquin has 29 RBIs on the season but Jacob House leads the team with 31 along with his team high five home runs.
A&M also leads the Big XII in team ERA at 2.97. They'll be going up against Sooner hitters who rank fifth in the conference in team batting average at .278. Led by Brian Brightwell (.429) the Sooners also have seven players batting above .300. Freshman Hunter Lockwood leads the conference in home runs (8) and his 28 RBIs are tops on the team.
The pitching match-ups have Oklahoma's Jordan John (4-4, 2.72 ERA) going up against A&M's Michael Wacha (4-0, 2.72 ERA) in Thursday night's series opener. Friday gives up OU's Dillon Overton (4-0, 3.54 ERA) against A&M's Ross Stripling (4-1, 2.87 ERA). In the finale on Saturday we'll see Oklahoma's Jonathan Gray (2-3, 5.26 ERA) against A&M's Rafael Pineda (4-0, 1.84 ERA).
There are no weak match-ups here in this series and the Sooners will need to play their best ball of the season to put themselves in a position to win these games. Doesn't mean that the task is impossible but it does mean that there is absolutely no room for error.
First pitch in game one is set for 6:35 this evening.