Skip Johnson gives story detailing Cade Horton's growth in 2021-2022 season

Oklahoma pitcher Cade Horton underwent tremendous growth throughout his first season playing for the Sooners. To the point that coach Skip Johnson entrusted him with the starting nod in a win or die Game 2 of the College World Series finals. And he delivered one of the great pitching performance in the history of the event by striking out 13 people and only surrendering a couple runs. Oklahoma failed to give him the necessary run support though.

Following the loss, Johnson praised Horton effusively for his development over the course of the season. He also compared him to a similar former Sooner star of the same name. You can read his comments below.

“Yeah, I mean, it was something that I experienced already with Cade Cavalli. Cade was a two-way guy when we got him, and early in the year as a freshman, he comes in and whatever it is, he had it. Then we go into January and he gets hurt.”

Like the other Cade, Cavalli, Horton also showed promise as a two-way player throughout his freshman season after Tommy John surgery took away his true freshman season.

Johnson continued:

“I’ll never forget this as long as I live, we just got beat in Tulsa from playing Oklahoma State, and he’s sitting right behind my bus seat, and I turn around and he stared out the window all night long, the whole ride home. I thought to myself, I was like, this guy is made of something different. Being a coach, you’ve got to look at stuff like that. You’ve got to find the value in what those guys go through.”

“When he started and coming back from the fall, our trainers and our strength coaches did an outstanding job of every day doing something with him to get him better, and then we started the season off the first month, he was our starting third baseman. We kind of knew what was going to happen, if it went down that road, his arm started feeling better. We started throwing bullpens.”

Finally, Johnson finished his comments by noting that Horton is still far from his ceiling.

“I still don’t think he’s a finished product. He’s really good. I get it. But he’s got poise. He’s got demeanor. He understands — he’s regurgitating everything that we talk about, one pitch at a time, going to releases, taking deep breaths, staying in his routines. He’s talking like a guy that’s a professional, and he’s still got a lot to grow in that area.

And I’m so proud of him, I can’t — that’s what we talk about. That’s what the University of Oklahoma is about. It’s about developing young men in that role.”