Clay Horning
OKLAHOMACITY — The good news, Sooner Nation, is Sunny Golloway is baffled.
That is, he doesn’t know why the Sooners committed two errors (it should have been three) and allowed five runs on three hits in the first inning against Missouri Friday. And he doesn’t know why his team, the best fielding team in the nation for crying out loud, allowed eight unearned runs (it should have been nine). And he doesn’t know why his team has scored only two runs in 34 innings this season at Bricktown Ballpark.
This may sound harsh, but he is clueless.
He doesn’t believe it’s the format, which guarantees everybody three games in Bricktown, win or lose, thus making no game an elimination game.
He doesn’t believe in a general letdown. Oklahoma practiced Thursday at L. Dale Mitchell Park and it was one of the Sooners’ best practices of the season.
“I’m not sure what team showed up today,” Golloway said.
He’s not sure.
He doesn’t know.
Good thing.
Because if he wasn’t baffled, and if he believed his not-lying eyes … well, there might not be much point in showing up for today’s 5 p.m. round of Bedlam. Indeed, if the Sooners are what they’ve presented themselves to be Wednesday and Friday in Bricktown, there wouldn’t even be much point in attending an NCAA regional or, yegads, hosting one.
But the Sooners are going to an NCAA regional. And though it may sound far-fetched, they could still host. Four-team regionals require 16 sites and that’s a lot of sites. So L. Dale Mitchell Park remains in the running.
And if their season is any indication, the Sooners might just win a regional. But if Friday night in the big city is any indication, well … fuhgeddaboutit.
The second pitch of the game — the second pitch of the game! — Steven Guerra caught a piece of Trevor Helms’ uniform. So skinny was the contact, the ball smacked hard into Jackson Williams’ catcher’s mit. But home plate umpire Patrick Spieler gave Helms first base and that’s how it started.
Helms stole second before Derek Chambers was retired. Then Freddy Rodriguez committed OU’s first boot. Zane Taylor’s single put runners at the corners and Ryan Lollis’ single made it 2-0 and Aaron Reza’s wild throw home, the should-have-been-an-error of the night, gave Lollis second base, which allowed Lollis to come home on Ryan Rohlinger’s boot at third base …
Yada, yada, yada.
A close inspection revealed the Sooners to be wearing their very own uniforms. Yet the way they were playing, they might as well have had Chico’s Bail Bonds emblazoned across.
Golloway explained his team is not unlike the old wishbone Sooners in that coming from far behind will never be its strength.
OU plays small ball rather than hit home runs, just as Kenny King might run it up the middle and Elvis Peacock might take it outside, but Thomas Lott wasn’t throwing any bombs. Of course, those Sooners always beat Missouri, even if it took Joe Washington delivering a miracle …
But I digress.
Golloway’s right. The Sooners are built for speed, not swat.
Yet the problem is hardly strategic. The problem is they’re playing crummy baseball.
Golloway said his team never quit and he was right about that, too. OU pushed nothing across, yet had several good swings against Max Scherzer, maybe the nation’s best pitcher.
Throwing 92 most of the night, the one time a Sooner reached third base, Williams in the third inning, Scherzer struck out Ryan Rohlinger swinging to end the inning. That pitch was clocked at 96.
The Sooners just weren’t any good.
“I really feel that we’ve let down our fans,” Golloway said.
They have. So he’s baffled.
Ditto for the players.
“There’s no explanation for it,” Williams said.
Because they remember taking two of three at Nebraska in front of tens of thousands of fans after being Bedlam swept. And they remember all those ninth-inning comebacks and a 13-game winning streak and all the rest, so these Sooners can’t be the real Sooners, those Sooners are the real Sooners.
That’s why they’re baffled. Because this isn’t them. Or so they believe.
They have time to prove themselves right.
Just not very much.
Clay Horning366-3526cfhorning@normantranscript.com
