Oklahoma selected for NCAA Baseball Tournament
You can breathe now. The season continues. Oklahoma baseball is dancing.
For the fifth time in 13 years, Oklahoma is headed to the state of Virginia, selected to the Charlottesville Regional. The No. 3-seed Sooners (31-26) open the NCAA Tournament on Friday versus No. 2-seed East Carolina (45-17). Host No. 7 overall Virginia will play No. 4-seed Army West Point (38-16).
Monday’s selection ends a 72-hour waiting period following the Sooners disappointing exit from the Phillips 66 Big 12 Championship. They were the second-to-last team selected in the 64-team field.
A return trip to the NCAA Tournament was never guaranteed this season. When you remember what head coach Skip Johnson and his staff were left with following last year’s Major League Baseball Draft, perhaps you can begin to appreciate what this accomplishment means for the program.
“You can make excuses. You can do whatever but we lost more than anybody else in the draft. We lost all three starters in the draft,” said Johnson on Friday following the Sooners elimination from the Big 12 Tournament. “And when you try to piece together a bullpen that was young coming back and there’s only a couple guys that were older putting that thing back together is really tough.
“As we’ve gone along and got back healthy, you can see the difference in our club in how we understand now how to play our offense a little bit better and how to play defense a little bit better.
“We’ve kind of bounced back and that’s a tribute to the coaches and what they’ve done.”
It’s also a tribute to scheduling. Oklahoma’s RPI (40) and strength of schedule (12 wins vs. RPI Top 50) put it over the top in earning a selection.
And it all begins on Friday 6 p.m. in Charlottesville.
Charlottesville Regional: The Oklahoma Opponents
VIRGINIA – The Cavaliers are a top-eight national seed for the first time since 2014 and enter the NCAA Tournament as one of the hotter teams in the country. UVA has won 10 of 11 games in the month of May before an exit during the pool play portion of last week’s ACC Tournament. Oklahoma eliminated the Cavaliers from the NCAA Tournament in 2010 and 2012.
ARMY WEST POINT – The Golden Knights posted a 21-4 conference record during the regular season. They head to the Charlottesville Regional winners of the Patriot League postseason tournament for the fifth consecutive year.
EAST CAROLINA – The Pirates should be hungry after being upset by the surprise team of this year’s NCAA Tournament. ECU lost to Tulane in the American Conference championship game. ECU won the regular season title for the fourth consecutive year. The Pirates led the conference in ERA (4.14) and second in batting average (.291) and fielding percentage (.979).
