Sooners Drop Opener In Samford Series - All Hope Is Not Lost!

On the field the Sooners took it on the chin in a 4-2 loss to Samford on Thursday night. Off the field things went exactly the way Oklahoma needed it to in order to keep them in the NCAA hunt. Now OU has to bounce back and take the final two games of their weekend series to solidify their post season dreams.

While Saxon Butler and Christian Durdaller were sending the ball out of the park on Oklahoma pitchers, Texas and Baylor as well as Oklahoma State and Texas A&M opened three-game sets that will help determine the Sooners' post season fate.

Friday Big XII Baseball Scores

Samford 4, Oklahoma 2

Kansas State 7, Texas Tech 5

Texas A&M 5, Oklahoma State 2

Baylor 16, Texas 5

Kansas 1, Missouri 0

OU can do no worse than 5th place in the conference standings but they sure can do better. If Baylor sweeps Texas over the weekend and A&M sweeps O-State then the Sooners will take a 3rd place finish in the regular season. Obviously that bodes extremely well for their post season chances and everything got off on the right foot on Thursday night...except for the part where Oklahoma lost.

A&M scored 3 runs in the 13th inning to move past OSU and Baylor completely abused Texas to the tune of 16-5. OU fans are certainly hoping those are trends that continue on Friday and Saturday while they try to turn their own luck around.

Samford went up 1-0 in the top of the first, when Butler went yard on starter Jordan John, and they would never fall behind during the game. The Sooners would tie in up in the bottom of the fourth when Max White scored on a Jack Mayfield double and after getting down by a run again in the top of the fifth, Garrett Carey scored to even it up once again.

That would be all the offense the Sooners could muster despite getting multiple runners on base. In all they left twelve runners stranded on the night. It doesn't matter how good your starting pitching is, if you can't score runs wins won't come around.

Samford went back in front in the top of the seventh and then scored their insurance run in the top of the ninth to get us to the 4-2 final.

This loss certainly doesn't mean the end of Oklahoma's post season hopes, while it may damage them though. It is widely speculated that if the Sooners can win the series then they are in the dance. That essentially turns Friday and Saturday's games into pressure cookers for the team as they basically hold their own fates in their hands.

First pitch in game two is set for 6:30 on Friday night.