Oklahoma State’s Bedlam Win, Missouri’s Stunning Sweep Highlight College Baseball’s Weekend (Off The Bat)

2. Oklahoma, meanwhile, continues to back up. The Sooners (17-14, 8-4) were 14-7 on March 22, the night they no-hit West Virginia. Since then, they are 3-7 and have lost three straight series.

Oklahoma’s swoon mostly coincides with the loss of outfielder John Spikerman (.394/.446/.535, 9 SB) to a broken hamate on March 16. His loss is a significant one, but it’s also not affecting the Sooners on the mound, where they have a 6.07 ERA in the last 10 games, nor does it explain why the defense has made 13 errors in that span.

Spikerman will be back in a couple weeks, but before then Oklahoma really needs to tighten up its defense and find some answers on the mound alongside starters Braden Davis (2-3, 6.30) and Kyson Witherspoon (2-2, 3.03). The last three weeks have been rough, but Oklahoma still has a top-25 RPI and is tied for first place in the Big 12 standings. Everything is still in front of the Sooners.

3. This was the final Bedlam weekend series, at least for the foreseeable future. Oklahoma is leaving the Big 12 for the SEC at the end of the season and while Josh Holliday and Skip Johnson have committed to continuing to play each other, they have agreed to do so in midweek action. The rivalry will likely be reduced to one midweek game a season, alternating annually between Stillwater and Norman.

No one asked me, but that’s really disappointing. In some respects, this is what’s lost in conference realignment. Texas and Texas A&M, for instance, have been playing under the same arrangement since A&M moved from the Big 12 to the SEC. And in other sports, Bedlam is going away altogether. Perhaps we should be thankful they’ll continue playing at all.

But this is also a series that this weekend drew 22,942 fans to O’Brate Stadium. As recently as 2019, they were annually holding games in Tulsa and Oklahoma City and drawing big crowds to the minor league ballparks.

So, to see this series reduced to one Tuesday night a year, that’s a missed opportunity. Scheduling is complicated and if they can’t make a weekend series work, I can understand it. But I hope in time these two rivals find a way to place at least home-and-home midweeks or to follow the model Florida and Florida State use with a third neutral site game thrown in.

4. Florida finally got tripped up. You knew it would happen sometime this season; the Gators were simply playing with fire too often to not eventually lose a series. That it happened at Missouri, which came into the weekend 12-18 and 1-8 in SEC play, is more than a little surprising. But the Tigers historically are tough in Columbia, especially when it’s cold.

For me, the real surprise is how it happened. Florida on Friday lost, 2-1, in 11 innings and collected just two hits on the night. Saturday’s 4-3 loss was relatively straightforward. In Sunday’s finale, however, Florida fell behind 7-1 after two innings, rallied to take a 10-8 lead in the eighth but couldn’t close the game and lost, 11-10, when Jeric Curtis hit a walk-off single that fell in just in front of center fielder Michael Robertson.

The entire ninth inning was one to forget for the Gators. They loaded the bases with no outs in the top of the inning but came away empty handed as Jacob Pearden struck out the heart of the order in succession. The bottom half of the inning started with back-to-back walks and included two wild pitches before Curtis’ game-winner.

Florida (17-14, 6-6) was supposed to be in an advantageous part of its schedule after last weekend edging past Mississippi State. It on Tuesday beat Florida A&M for its first midweek win since Feb. 28. It had consecutive weekends at Mizzou and home against South Carolina before entering a very challenging second-half of SEC play. It looked like a chance to build some momentum and string some wins together.

Instead, it’s now facing a massive week. Florida visits Florida State on Tuesday, having already lost the season series against the Seminoles, and hosts South Carolina (22-10, 6-6) in an urgent series. Visits to Vanderbilt and Arkansas are on deck.

Florida has some big series wins but it’s also piling up losses with the teeth of its schedule still to come. It can’t afford to let this go sideways.

5. While this was a brutal weekend for Florida, let’s give Mizzou (15-18, 4-8) its credit. It has played Florida every year since joining the SEC in 2013. This is the first time it has ever swept Florida.

The Tigers pitched exceptionally well the first two games of the series. On Friday, Logan Lunceford (6 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 8 K) and Carter Rustad (5 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 0 BB, 5 K) combined to two-hit Florida. On Saturday, Javyn Pimentel (5 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 5 K), Brock Lucas (2 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 BB, 3 K) and Ryan Magdic (2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 K) were strong. Sunday was messy but Missouri not only found a way to finish the sweep, it also became the first team this season to beat Florida in a game Jac Caglianone started on the mound.

Missouri (15-18, 4-8) went 5-0 on the week (it also beat Tennessee-Martin twice) and now has more SEC wins than Auburn (2-10), Mississippi (3-9) and LSU (3-9) and as many as Alabama. Maybe this is the start of a resurgence for the Tigers, maybe it’ll end up being their season highlight. In either case, it feels like an important moment in Kerrick Jackson’s first season as head coach and one he can build upon going forward in his tenure.

6. The biggest news of the weekend at Kentucky was the Wildcats sweeping Alabama to extend their winning streak to nine games and improve to 11-1 in SEC play for the first time ever and surely not their longtime, massively paid men’s basketball coach leaving for another job in the conference. Right? Ah, well, nevertheless, let’s talk about the first-place ‘Cats.

Kentucky (27-4, 11-1) is winning big playing the kind of baseball it consistently has during coach Nick Mingione’s tenure. The Wildcats pitch and defend at a high level (3.42 team ERA, third in the SEC; .978 fielding percentage, fifth) and put pressure on teams offensively (72 stolen bases, first; 21 sacrifice bunts, tied first).

The Wildcats took care of business on the mound all weekend, holding Alabama to three runs in the series. Dominic Niman threw a three-hit shutout in Saturday’s 7-0 victory and Kentucky only needed two relievers in the series as starters Niman, Trey Pooser (7 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 1 BB, 3 K) and Mason Moore (7 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 6 K) combined for 23 innings.

Kentucky’s SEC schedule has not been elite. It’s played Georgia, Missouri, Mississippi and Alabama, all of which are under .500 in conference play. The bigger tests are coming – but Kentucky gets the biggest tests at home (Tennessee, Arkansas and Vanderbilt), while it travels to Auburn, South Carolina and Florida.

Kentucky already is nearly a lock to host regionals and it can start thinking bigger. Like, top-eight overall seed or SEC East champion. It’s never been a top-eight seed and it’s only won the SEC East once (2006). There’s a lot of baseball to be played, but these are heady times for the Wildcats.

7. It’s safe to say at this point that Alabama (22-10, 4-8) has a problem with road games. The Crimson Tide are 3-7 on the road and those three wins have come at Samford, Alabama State and UAB. Meanwhile, Georgia and Kentucky swept them.

The good news is that Alabama is 16-2 at Sewell-Thomas Stadium and its remaining road series are relatively manageable – Mississippi, Mississippi State and Auburn. But it’s going to have to either really make its home-field advantage count against Arkansas, Texas A&M and LSU or prove it can win on the road if it’s going to build an NCAA Tournament resume. Its next two weeks at home against No. 1 Arkansas and No. 3 Texas A&M are suddenly critical.

8. Unfortunately, one of the biggest stories of the weekend was the brouhaha in Starkville on Saturday night. Following a play at the plate to end the eighth inning and keep the game tied, when center fielder Connor Hujsak and second baseman Amari Larry combined to throw out Dillon Carter at home, Mississippi State catcher Johnny Long appeared to yell at Carter and knee him in the ribs, preventing him from getting up. That incident expanded to include players and coaches from both teams converging on home plate, though no punches were thrown and both teams were mostly kept apart from each other.

After clearing the scene, the umpires used video review to determine what players should be ejected for joining the fracas. The SEC conducts reviews using a centralized system at the league office in Birmingham and the whole situation took more than a half hour to sort out. In the end, 11 players were ejected, forcing both teams to dip deep into their benches. Mississippi State called on pitcher Khal Stephan, who had started Friday, to play left field.

Georgia pushed ahead in the ninth inning on a solo home run from Clayton Chadwick. Mississippi State got a runner on in the ninth and the game ended with Stephan striking out in his first career plate appearance.

The 11 players who were ejected all faced suspension. But before Sunday’s finale, the SEC continued to review the video and consulted with the NCAA’s security-rules editor. It suspended just five of the 11 players for violating a rule prohibiting players from “leaving their position to potentially participate in a verbal altercation or a physical confrontation or a fight.”

I haven’t had the luxury of reviewing all the video and all the angles, but I think five players getting ejected/suspended is closer to correct than the initial 11. It’s befuddling why the SEC took so long to come up with the initial ejection list. Typically, it’s centralized review process is much quicker than having the umpires at the field go to review calls themselves, as most other leagues do.

It’s hard to say whether the result of the game would have been different if the situation were administered differently. But given how fine the margins are when it comes to NCAA Tournament resumes, it’ll be hard not to wonder if Georgia or Mississippi State ends up on the bubble for hosting or an at-large bid. And because the conference suspended less than half the players it ejected, it’s should be further investigated where the process broke down and how it can be fixed.

9. Mississippi State won the series with a 9-8 victory Sunday, but Georgia (24-8, 5-7) is now very interestingly positioned. Its SEC slate was frontloaded with road series (Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi State) and it swept Alabama in its lone home conference series.

It now returns home to host Missouri (15-18, 4-8) and Mississippi (18-15, 3-9) the next two weeks. The Bulldogs have a top-10 RPI already and with a big couple weeks – think 5-1 or 6-0, not just 4-2 – you can take the idea of an Athens Regional seriously. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but that’s not something I anticipated coming into the year.

10. UC Irvine won a critical series against UC Santa Barbara to take full control of the Big West title race. The Anteaters (24-4, 10-2) and Gauchos (17-10, 5-4) split the first two games of the series before UCI rolled to an 11-4 victory in Sunday’s finale. The Anteaters raced out to a 9-0 lead in the first three innings to remove any real doubt, though the Gauchos did tighten the game up a bit in the final third.

UCSB was picked by most as the preseason favorite in the Big West, but I liked UCI and its veteran offense. So far, that’s looking like one of my best preseason predictions. The Anteaters are averaging 9.25 runs per game and outfielder Caden Kendle, who opted to return to school after being a 10th round pick last July, is hitting .442/.529/.663 with 11 doubles.

So how far can UCI take this? It’s early but it’s got a serious metrics problem. The Anteaters rank No. 17 in RPI and if today was Selection Monday, they would host. The problem is that Selection Monday isn’t for another eight weeks and just six of UCI’s remaining 27 games are against teams that rank in the top 100 of RPI. Just about any loss the rest of the way is going to hurt UCI’s RPI and it’s obviously not going to go 27-0.

The margin of error to host is slim. But UCI would be a very challenging draw for any team in a regional. Righthander Nick Pinto has made more starts than any other player in college baseball and that powerful, veteran lineup would be a very difficult out. The Anteaters are the kind of team that could put together an Omaha run if they carry momentum into June.

11. After getting swept at home last weekend by North Carolina, Wake Forest came out fighting this week. It on Tuesday got some revenge on UNC Greensboro, which was the first team to beat it this season, with a 9-2 win in Winston-Salem. Then it went to Blacksburg and swept Virginia Tech, which came into the weekend at 10-2 in the ACC and having won nine of its last 10 games.

Wake (21-10, 7-8) didn’t do anything fancy. It rolled out the same rotation it’s wanted to all season and pretty much the same lineup. Aside from All-American first baseman Nick Kurtz, who has caught fire and went 7-for-11 with five home runs (including three Sunday), it didn’t get outlandish performances from anyone. The Demon Deacons just played pretty solid baseball all weekend long.

Maybe we’ll look back at this as a turning point – the weekend the Preseason No. 1 team found itself and started a second-half run. But even if it’s not, it’s a reminder of what Wake is capable of when it’s healthy.

12. Virginia Tech hadn’t lost a series this season and was 10-2 in conference play coming into the weekend. That record was a bit deceiving, however. The Hokies’ first four ACC series came against Notre Dame, Louisville, Boston College and Pittsburgh, which probably all will finish in the bottom half of the conference standings. This weekend, therefore, represented a chance to really make a statement at the midpoint of ACC play.

Virginia Tech (21-8, 10-5) instead fell flat. That’s not a huge deal – pretty much every team in the country has a bad weekend on its resume. But from a hosting and ACC title race perspective, it might matter a lot. The Hokies’ conference slate stiffens in the second half, including visits to North Carolina (20-0 at home) and Virginia (16-3 at home). Its metrics aren’t great (RPI 35, SOS 70, non-conference SOS 210), so it really needs all the ACC wins it can get to help its hosting case.

But one bad weekend against a talented team doesn’t need to be more than that. Virginia Tech has a chance to get back on track this week against Liberty (15-16) and at Georgia Tech (19-11, 5-7). The Hokies must move on quickly.

13. LSU took another tough home SEC series loss, dropping two games against Vanderbilt. Like the Tigers’ series loss to Florida two weeks ago, it was a series of two halves with LSU winning the first but Vanderbilt taking the second – and the series.

LSU’s depth on the mound was again exposed. When righthander Luke Holman on Thursday ran into trouble in the middle innings, allowing Vanderbilt to cut what had been a 9-0 deficit to three runs, LSU coach Jay Johnson turned to bullpen ace Griffin Herring. The sophomore lefthander closed out the victory with 3.1 scoreless innings but needed 56 pitches to do so. That meant he wasn’t available Friday when LSU was trying to hold a 6-5 lead in the final three innings. Lefthander Nate Ackenhausen was asked to do what Herring had done the day before but fell short, as he gave up a go-ahead, two-run home run to Jayden Davis with two outs in the eighth inning. Vanderbilt didn’t trail the rest of the weekend.

LSU is 20-2 this season in games it leads after six innings. The two losses are Friday against Vanderbilt and March 23 against Florida, when the Gators scored two runs in the final two innings and went on to win in extra innings. Pinning everything on the bullpen in those instances is unfair – in both cases LSU’s offense didn’t expand the lead in the final three innings and the bullpen was being asked to cover more than three innings – but it’s also hard not to see those games as the pivot point for the Tigers’ season.

LSU is now 21-12 and 3-9 in SEC play. A significant turnaround is needed to host regionals and it will need to go 11-7 in the final six conference series to feel good about its NCAA Tournament chances. Turn those two losses into wins and things would feel very different in Baton Rouge right now.

14. For Vanderbilt, bouncing back to win the series at Alex Box Stadium was an impressive show of fortitude. It had previously been swept at South Carolina, its only other true road games this season. If it doesn’t marshal that comeback Friday night, there’s a real conversation about the Commodores’ play away from Hawkins Field with a very difficult trip to Texas A&M on deck this weekend.

Instead, Vanderbilt (25-7, 8-4) can feel good about the way it bounced back and the growth of young players like Davis and freshman lefthander Ethan McElvain, who threw 3.1 scoreless innings to finish Friday’s game and earn his first career win. The Commodores will again be tested this weekend but they carry momentum into the series.

15. Western Kentucky (21-11, 6-3) became the first team this season to win a series against Dallas Baptist (25-6, 6-3). The Hilltoppers won the first two games of the weekend behind strong pitching, holding the Patriots to four runs on 11 hits. Last year, in coach Marc Rardin’s first season with the program, WKU went 33-26, posting its first 30-win season since 2011. It’s well on its way to another, though its RPI (112) is going to need a lot of work if its to get into the NCAA Tournament picture.

DBU, meanwhile, can’t afford another weekend like that one. Its non-conference schedule was not particularly strong this year and it needs to dominate Conference USA if it is going to maintain an RPI good enough to host regionals. It ranks 20th now and just five of its remaining 23 games are against teams that currently rank in the top 100 of RPI. Like UC Irvine, any loss DBU takes the rest of the way is going to hurt.

Eight for Omaha

Arkansas, Clemson, Florida State, North Carolina, Oregon State, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt

Just one change to this week’s field as I swap Florida for Vanderbilt. This was a very difficult exercise this week. There aren’t a lot of complete baseball teams around the country, which is what I typically look for in an Omaha team. As we get into the second half of the season, this whole thing feels wide open.

Just on the outside this week was Kentucky, which looks like it’s going to have an advantageous runway if it can grab a top-eight seed. I also like UC Irvine and Virginia as contenders.

Looking Ahead

No. 3 Texas A&M hosts No. 5 Vanderbilt in top-five matchup. Fresh off their series win at LSU, the Commodores (25-7, 8-4) hit the road again to take on the Aggies (28-4, 8-4). Both teams have lost just one series this year (Vanderbilt at South Carolina and A&M at Florida) and are led by their high-end pitching staffs. This weekend promises to be a very entertaining series.

No. 19 UCF visits West Virginia. The Knights (21-8, 8-7) are ranked in the Top 25 for the first time since 2021 and are coming off a key series win against Kansas State. West Virginia (19-12, 8-4) tops the Big 12 standings after sweeping Kansas and is riding high after welcoming back All-American JJ Wetherholt to the lineup. This is a critical series for both teams.

Portland hosts San Diego in a first-place showdown in the West Coast Conference. Both the Toreros (20-10, 7-2) and Pilots (20-9, 6-0) are hot. USD has won nine straight and Portland has won 10 of its last 11 games, with the lone loss coming to Oregon. It’s early, but these look to be the two best teams in the WCC and both have a shot at an at-large bid in the NCAA Tournament. Portland has the conference’s best pitching staff (3.85 team ERA), while USD leads the conference in scoring (7.4 runs per game). It has all the makings of a fun weekend.