Oklahoma Baseball Starts Big 12 Tournament With Early Morning Match Against West Virginia

If you though those 11:00 AM kickoffs were bad in football then you're absolutely going to hate Oklahoma's start time for the Big 12 Baseball Tournament on Wednesday. The fifth seeded Sooners will play against fourth seeded West Virginia with a first pitch time scheduled for 9:00 AM. Forget peanuts and cracker jacks, we want bacon and eggs when we sing take me out to the ballgame!

Oklahoma is on the same side of the bracket as Texas Tech which means a win over the Mountaineers Wednesday morning would put them up against the Big 12 regular season champs on Thursday...barring a major upset from eighth seeded Kansas State.

Despite taking a best of three game series from the Mountaineers back in April, two games to one, West Virginia edged out the Sooners for the fourth place in the conference by a half a game. Since their series against Oklahoma the Mountaineers have won fourteen of their last seventeen (including the series finale against the Sooners) and finished the regular season with a 33-21 record.

Third baseman Ivan Vera is West Virginia's top hitter with a .407 average. He's followed by right fielder Darius Hill who is batting.348 on the year. First baseman Jackson Cramer leads the team with eight home runs and has recorded 41 RBI on a .303 bating average.

A pair of freshmen will take the mound in this game as the Sooners will throw Jake Irvin (6-1, 3.93 ERA, 46 K) and the Mountaineers will turn to Michael Grove (2-4, 2.44, 56 K).