Oklahoma baseball stars offer high praise for head coach Skip Johnson

It has been a special season for Skip Johnson and Oklahoma baseball. In his fourth year as the Sooners coach, Johnson led the program to its third Big 12 championship in program history this past month.

Now, he has them competing for a chance at the national crown. Oklahoma took out Texas A&M in the opening game of the College World Series on Friday to put themselves one step closer to the ultimate goal in Omaha.

With a contest against Notre Dame at 7 p.m. ET Sunday now looming to advance to the winner’s side of the bracket, OU players reflected on how Johnson has helped them throughout the year.

“Skip keeps it loose as you can tell it right now,” Sooners pitcher Trevin Michael said. “That’s nice. I’ve been in a program where the head coach was hard-nosed and iron fist. And I’ve been in a program where it was the complete opposite and it was just whatever the players wanted to do.

“And here we get kind of a happy medium of that, and guys that have never been in another program probably don’t understand that as much as I do. But I’ve been in three different collegiate programs, and I would say the coaching staff here definitely keeps it light and keeps everything poised. And it’s never too never too high, never too low. We talk about riding the wave and that trickles down from the coaching staff.”

After leading the Sooners to the NCAA Tournament in his inaugural season in 2018, Johnson and OU failed to reach the field in both 2019 and 2021 (the 2020 baseball season was cut short due to the COVID-10 pandemic). Oklahoma finished just 27-28 in 2021 but found a way to bounce back in 2022.

A big part of that was returning players such as Tanner Tredaway and Peyton Graham, who are first and second respectively in batting average on the team. However, newcomers such as freshman second baseman Jackson Nicklaus have also found a way to contribute. That was certainly the case in Saturday’s victory against the Aggies, in which he finished 2-for-3 at the plate with four RBI and a home run.

Second on the team with 11 home runs this season, Nicklaus also credits Johnson with putting him in a position to succeed early in his college career.

“Me being a true freshman this is all new to me everything about this is a new experience,” he said. “And Skip has really helped develop me as a player and a man early in the fall. He was hard when he needed to be hard on me. He was light when he needed to be light on me.

“He helped me get acclimated to playing, gave me a shot where not a lot of other programs would. He likes to keep it fun and joke around and likes to give us a hard time at practice. On the road we keep it light. But it’s also discipline. We’re a disciplined team and he instills that in us. At the end of the day, like I said, we’re just going to go out there and play baseball. Doesn’t matter who we play.”

Skip Johnson and Oklahoma will hope to remain hot as they continue their quest to win a national title in Omaha. If they can beat the Fighting Irish on Sunday, they will be just one more win away from punching their ticket to the championship series.