In a game played at Globe Life Field on Thursday evening, number one seed Oklahoma (36-18) managed to hold off a late charge from the seventh seeded Kansas (30-22), as they won 7-5 during the 2024 Phillips 66 Enormous 12 Baseball Championship.
Eight of Sooners’ hitters had base knocks with five guys having multi-hit games. Kendall Pettis went 3-for-4 with a twofold, two singles, and a run scored.
Oklahoma took the lead already in the first inning after Easton Carmichael’s sacrifice fly ball got John Spikerman home who previously hit a single.
Three erroneous moves by sooners yielded three jayhawks runs in the second. Lenny Ashby started Kansas’ inning with double that would be their only hitting in that frame but for an error made while catching the flyball, two walks and two groundballs were miss-handled hence giving Jayhawks an upper hand by three runs to one.
In the lower half of the inning, Oklahoma responded by scoring a run with three singles. A below-market quantity was added by Anthony Mackenzie and Scott Mudler picked up the RBI. By robbing Jackson Nicklaus’ home run over the Jayhawks‘ bullpen in right-center field, John Nett maintained Kansas’ gap
Kansas made it a two-run game again in the top of third on an RBI single by Mike Koszewski that scored Collier Cranford who reached base on an opposite field two-base error.
The leading changes followed the back-and-forth score issue into four innings as Pettis hit off a lead double to allow his second RBI single from Mudler during this contest. Once Jaxon Willits deposited a two-run home run into the Jayhawks” bullpen, Sooners took 5-4 lead.
Carmichael began a two-run seventh for OU with left-center wall triple and came in on Michael Snyder’s single. With Nett diving under it in center field for a triple Nicklaus was already across as pulled.
The Jayhawks did not go down without a fight as they capitalized on an error in the ninth inning and Ashby’s one-out double of the game to score a run off a Cranford sacrifice fly.
Carter Campbell picked up the win for Oklahoma after throwing three shutout frames and allowing just one walk. Campbell improves to 4-0 on the season. Malachi Witherspoon registered his fourth save of the year, closing out the game for Oklahoma and extinguishing a ninth-inning rally by Kansas.
