“Texas A&M can flat play, they can pitch,” said OU head coach Sunny Golloway. “Honestly, I am going to miss coming down here and, unfortunately, we have to live with our last trip like this. It’s not that we didn’t play well. We just didn’t win and there were three really good ball games.”
In all three, including the latest, the Sooners led in the middle or late stages and in all three, they squandered those leads and fell short.
Game one featured a 12-inning duel in which OU lost 4-3 after leading 3-2 heading into the bottom of the eighth.
Pitcher Jordan John lasted 7 1/3 innings before exiting, and the Aggies ultimately scratched the winning run across on Krey Bratsen’s sacrifice fly in the 12th.
Steven Okert surrendered the loss despite retiring 10 straight batters during one stretch and not allowing a single hit, while striking out four.
Game two included more late inning struggles.
After starter Dillon Overton and the Sooners again carried a lead into the final third of the contest, Texas A&M once again found a way to erase it.
The Aggies scored a pair in the seventh and took the 3-2 lead, then chased Overton after 7 1/3 en route to his first loss of the season in a 5-2 defeat.
Saturday’s series finale featured more of the same.
For the third straight contest, OU took the early advantage and couldn’t hold it.
Holding a 3-1 lead after four, starter Jonathan Gray surrendered a three-run bottom of the fifth, and OU never could recover.
So, three games, three leads and three losses, making for not such a festive Easter weekend for the Crimson and Cream.
“Our margin of error is small and it got the best of us in one inning of every game of this series,” Golloway said.
Left fielder Erik Ross did manage a pair of two-hit games, and center fielder Max White collected two in the final game, while second baseman Jack Mayfield posted the best single game of the series with a 3-for-5 showing and two runs scored in the opener.
Now, the Sooners will try to regroup when they host No. 9 Arkansas at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at L. Dale Mitchell Park.
Follow me at twitter.com/joeyhelmer10 or facebook.com/joeyhelmer.