Oklahoma Baseball | Sooners Take Series From Braves Behind Strong Pitching

As the season marches on closer and closer to the conference tournament and the, hopefully, the NCAA tournament, it becomes even more imperative that Oklahoma develops as deep pitching staff. Tournament play will require more than three weekend starters and a few middle relievers. In their mid-week series against Alcorn State OU's pitching staff has been more than solid and capped off the two-game series with an 8-0 shutout win over the Braves.

Adam Choplick picked up his third win on the season, to just a single loss, by throwing six scoreless innings and striking out four batters. The trio of Thomas McIlraith, Blake Rogers, and Kenny Saenz finished the shutout by going an inning each where they collectively allowed just one hit and struck out three.

From the plate the Sooners were just as strong as they were in the season opener on Tuesday night. A first inning double by Craig Aikin scored Kolbey Carpenter and Taylor Alspaugh to get Oklahoma on the board. Aikin would then make it a 3-0 game in the first when he came home on a sacrifice by Sheldon Neuse. Oklahoma added another run in the fourth, when an RBI single by Carpenter scored Ake, and then poured it on in the sixth when they plated four more runs to get to the final 8-0 score.

Kolbey Carpenter, the reigning Big 12 Player of the Week, continued his assault on college pitchers by recording the 20th multi-hit game of the season. He crossed home plate twice and knocked in an RBI. Junior Craig Aikin had three of the team's seven RBI.