Bad luck hurts Sooners

John Shinn
The Norman Transcript

April 29, 2007 12:22 am

— Luck certainly wasn’t on Oklahoma’s side Saturday. A pair of late-inning double plays and a rally-killing grounder off a base runner’s foot states the case.
But the Sooners had another enemy in Saturday’s 6-3 loss to Kansas at L. Dale Mitchell Park — themselves.
A quick glance at the scoreboard spelled it out. Kansas managed those six runs on just six hits. That kind of efficiency doesn’t come without a little help.
The Sooners were all too willing to provide it.
“You look up on the board and you see one hit, but there’s three runs on the board,” OU coach Sunny Golloway said. “That was the case today.”
It was a snapshot of the second inning. OU starter Heath Taylor issued two straight walks and then gave up a two-run triple to Brock Simpson.
Simpson later scored on an infield single and the Sooners were fighting from behind the rest of the way.
Taylor, who dropped to 7-2 with the loss, settled down after the second and didn’t allow another run. He struck out nine over six innings and only gave up the three hits in the second inning.
It was enough for the Jayhawks.
The Sooners (28-16, 8-9 Big 12) hoped they would make a move up the conference standings this weekend and put themselves in position to do that with Friday night’s 8-0 victory.
But the momentum was gone after the second Saturday.
OU got on the board with two runs in the third inning. Joseph Hughes scored on Aljay Davis’ sacrifice bunt and Aaron Ivey, who went 3-for-4, scored on an error to cut it to 3-2.
The Sooners had plenty of opportunities. They collected 10 hits. Few came with the opportunity to score runs, though.
“The big thing between us winning and losing was they had some clutch hits,” Ivey said. “When they got base runners on, they got big hits for extra bases.
“We had 10 hits, which isn’t bad. But a lot them were singles with nobody on.”
Nick Czyz picked up the win for the Jayhawks and improved to 3-6. He allowed six hits but just two runs.
The Sooners tried to do some damage in the late innings, but that’s when the bad luck kicked in.
OU had runners in scoring position in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings. But Zach Hedges grounded into a double play to end the sixth. Aaron Reza lined into one to end the seventh.
Kansas (21-26, 7-13) created some breathing room on Buck Afenir’s eighth-inning two-run double and Simpson’s sacrifice fly.
OU got to Kansas reliever Paul Smyth in the eighth.
Joe Dunigan delivered an RBI single and the Sooners had runners at first and second base with one out.
Zach Hedges laced a grounder in the hole between first and second. It looked it would score another run, but instead found Dunigan’s elbow and the runner’s interference call turned into the second out. The rally was all but dead.
Those were the breaks that didn’t go OU’s way.
“That’s baseball,” Golloway said. “You have to take the good with the bad and move on … What we have to do is control the stuff we can control. We didn’t do a very good job of that.”
The Sooners get another shot at 1 p.m. today when they face the Jayhawks in the series finale.
John Shinn
366-3536
jshinn@normantranscript.com