OU baseball completes sweep vs. Missouri
OU baseball finished a weekend sweep of Missouri with an 8-4 win on Sunday at Kimrey Family Stadium.
Cord Rager returned to the Sunday starter role after missing the last few weekends, throwing five innings and allowing just a single in the second inning and striking out eight.
Brendan Brock hit his team-leading ninth home run. Camden Johnson extended the Sooners lead to 8-0 with a fourth inning blast. Dasan Harris produced yet again from the bottom of the Oklahoma lineup with a career-high three hits.
The Sooners pull themselves into a five-way tie for fourth place in the Southeastern Conference, moving to 10-8 with the weekend sweep.
“You can say what you want about the opponent, but they’re well-coached. I think they’re really good. They have really talented players. We’ve seen some arms early in the weekend. Last year three or four of their arms were bullpen arms, but we saw an arm last night as good as there is in our league. So I think that’s the biggest thing, just finishing it off and finishing a team off, and sweeping a team is always good, especially in this league,” said Oklahoma head coach Skip Johnson.
RAGER SET THE TONE, EXCELLENT IN RETURN
Cord Rager didn’t take long to make up for lost time on the bump.
The freshman left-hander struck out the side in the first and cruised with four runs of support through five innings and striking out eight. The lone Missouri hit came in the second on a Kaden Peer one-out single to center.
“I didn’t forget how to compete while I was out for two weeks. I just picked up right where I left off and went after them,” said Rager after making his first start since March 28. “It was a great start. That’s what I wanted, to make up for the two weeks I missed.”
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Working on a pitch count that Oklahoma wanted to keep under 70 pitches, Rager retired the final nine batters he faced in order.
“Yeah, he was good. We kind of penciled out, we didn’t know how far he was going to be able to go, 60–70 pitches, and we end up getting 63, which is really good. Gave us some length in the game. I thought he was attacking. A lot of times when a guy comes off a lat deal, you think he’s going to be kind of hesitant. I thought he was attacking, and there wasn’t any sign of him backing away from that side of it. I thought he did really well,” said Johnson.
SOONERS BUILDING MOMENTUM, TOUGH STRETCH AHEAD
Oklahoma has now won six of its last eight games, finding winning weekends in four of its first six conference series. Now the tough stretch begins over the final month and a half of the regular season. The Sooners are on the road at Auburn and Arkansas. They play a final home series against Florida before closing the season in Oklahoma City.
The good news is there’s been some return to form of late.
“They’re more confident. You saw a lot of guys—they’re getting more and more confident. Deiten (LaChance) is getting more confident. Camden (Johnson) is kind of fluctuating in between that. Getting Cord (Rager) out there, getting Cameron (Johnson) out there, making some adjustments to him was really good, and seeing LJ (Mercurius) do what he did on Friday night was really good,” said Johnson.
NEXT UP
No. 14 Oklahoma (27-12, 10-8) hosts Oral Roberts on Tuesday at Kimrey Family Stadium before a weekend trip to Auburn (April 24-26).
