Oklahoma

College baseball week in review: Oklahoma keeps rolling, Clemson sweeps South Carolina

Published

9 months ago

March 3, 2025

College baseball week in review: Oklahoma keeps rolling, Clemson sweeps South Carolina

Oklahoma is on the rise in its first season in the Southeastern Conference. The Sooners entered The Athletic college baseball Top 25 last week at No. 23 after they beat then-No. 9 Oregon State and then-No. 3 Virginia at the Round Rock Classic.

Oklahoma remained perfect with a weekend sweep over Cal State Northridge in Norman. The Sooners rallied for a 3-2 win on Sunday after they scored 39 runs in four games over the previous five days.

Right-handed junior Kyson Witherspoon, the reigning SEC Pitcher of the Week, threw six shutout innings Friday against Northridge. Witherspoon has a 28-to-3 strikeout-to-walk ratio and 1.50 ERA in three starts, coming off an offseason in which he pitched for the USA Baseball Collegiate National Team.

Witherspoon gives the Sooners a high-end SEC ace. And his twin brother, Malachi, is a solid No. 2 for the Sooners, posting a 2-0 mark with a 1.88 ERA in three starts. He closed for Team USA last summer. The Witherspoon twins came to OU from Northwest Florida State College ahead of the 2024 season.

The Sooners’ No. 3 starter is Cameron Johnson, a top-15 national recruit in the Class of 2023 who spent his freshman season at LSU. His command continues to be an issue — he has walked 10 in 13.1 innings — but opposing hitters are batting only .204 against him in his three starts.

OU improved to 11-0, its best start since it won its first 16 games in 2011, with the three wins against Northridge. The Sooners visit Dallas Baptist on Tuesday, the most significant obstacle in the way of Oklahoma taking a 16-0 record into its SEC opener at South Carolina on March 14.

The Sooners advanced to the College World Series finals in 2022 but failed to get out of a Regional the last two seasons.

Clemson made a statement in handing rival South Carolina its first three losses of the season, sweeping the Gamecocks 5-3, 5-1 and 8-2. The opening game was played Friday at Clemson, Saturday in Greenville, S.C., and Sunday at Founders Park in Columbia, the Gamecocks’ home stadium.

Ethan Darden pitched seven scoreless innings on Saturday, allowing three hits, to win the Bob Bradley Award as Clemson’s MVP in the annual series. The Tigers are 10-1.

Columbia has enjoyed a rich recent history in baseball. The Lions have won the Ivy League postseason championship five times dating back to 2013.

They took Miami to a winner-take-all seventh game of a Regional in 2015 and won a pair of games at the Blacksburg Regional in 2022.

In Columbia’s not-so-recent history, Lou Gehrig played at the New York school.

Over the weekend, Columbia played at Oregon, the preseason Big Ten favorite. The Ducks swept the four-game series, scoring 55 runs in the first two games. Oregon won 35-1 in the opener of a Saturday doubleheader.

Columbia does not need a pity party. The Lions will be fine. They play at Georgia this week.

But the lopsided scores in Eugene serve as a canary in the coal mine for college baseball.

What is to come of the Division I format, with more than 300 teams vying for the same postseason, as the 11.7-scholarship limit disappears in the wake of the NCAA v. House settlement?

If terms of the settlement are approved next month, the roster limit will drop in 2026 from 40 players to 34. But coaches will no longer be limited by the NCAA in how they distribute scholarship money.

Rich SEC schools and other power-conference programs that invest in baseball can soar past 11.7 scholarships if they choose to pay for it. Scholarship costs will be deducted from revenue revenue-sharing allotment, expected in 2025-26 to be capped at $20.5 million.

Columbia and its Ivy League partners do not award athletic scholarships. Safe to say the Lions also won’t see any part of revenue-share dollars. And while the vast majority of college baseball players will not get rich from the House settlement, its impact and the next wave of NIL payments are sure to tip the scales further in this sport.

In fact, it all may prove to be a death knell in the bids of under-resourced programs to compete with the likes of Oregon and Georgia.

Administrations on both sides of the power structure ought to think twice about scheduling such future series.

Columbia will continue to find and develop good players. Just not enough of them to stay on the field with an elite group of power programs on track to grow more powerful.

Gardner-Webb designated hitter Dale Francis smashed four home runs on Saturday in the Runnin’ Bulldogs’ 16-14 win at Appalachian State.

Francis, a fifth-year senior from Fort Pierce, Fla., drove in 12 runs. After he hit a grand slam in the seventh inning, Francis was denied a chance at his fifth home run when the Mountaineers intentionally walked him in the top of the ninth inning with one out.

Have a day @Too_good_dj ‼️
4 homeruns
12 RBIs
Intentionally walked, with the bases loaded. @KendallRogers @aaronfitt @d1baseball @midmajors_d1 @JoeHealyD1 @Mike_Rooney @Monty2740 @CollegeBaseCNT @Micah_CBC @GWUSports @BigSouthSports @NCAABaseball pic.twitter.com/SolDmwBSxg
— Gardner-Webb Baseball (@GWUBaseball) March 2, 2025

He also homered in the first, fifth and sixth innings. Francis transferred after last season to Gardner-Webb from Division II Erskine College, where he hit .405 with 15 homers in 33 games last year. Through 13 games this season, he’s hitting .409 with seven homers, 27 RBIs and a 1.436 OPS.

Marshall McDougall of Florida State owns the NCAA record for home runs and RBIs in a game. McDougall hit six bombs and drove in 16 runs against Maryland in 1999.

Gardner-Webb dropped to 6-7 after a 9-7 loss on Sunday to App State. The 6-foot-3, 230-pound Francis, hitting in the cleanup spot, finished 1 for 3 with a single.

Gardner-Webb of the Big South has not appeared in the NCAA postseason since its move to Division I in 2003. For any host school that might draw G-W in a Regional — if the Bulldogs can find a way to win the conference tournament — there’s a big bat in the middle of that lineup to avoid.

Miami won the series finale, 13-7, against Florida on Sunday in Gainesville to hand the fourth-ranked Gators their first loss in 12 games this season.

To say their rivalry has been tightly contested through the years is an understatement.

It’s been all Hurricanes today in Gainesville. They are going to salvage the series and hand the Gators their 1st loss of the season
All-Time series is now back tied up 136-136-1 between the 2 schools pic.twitter.com/WrxTO9eAPf
— 11Point7 College Baseball (@11point7) March 2, 2025
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Top-ranked Texas A&M, after a 5-0 start, lost four consecutive games but avoided a winless week with a 14-4 victory against Rice on Sunday night in the Astros Foundation College Classic. Also at Dalkin Park over the weekend in Houston, Oklahoma State beat the Aggies 4-0, and Arizona scored twice in the top of the ninth inning for a 3-2 over A&M.

Texas State beat Texas A&M 7-3 on Tuesday in College Station after the Aggies lost the finale of a three-game series against Cal Poly on Feb. 23.

Earlier in the Week, A&M learned that sophomore Gavin Grahovac, their All-America third baseman, will miss the rest of the 2025 season due to a shoulder injury.

Speaking of Arizona, Chip Hale’s team has rebounded nicely after a 0-3 start. The Wildcats, ranked No. 15 in the preseason, won seven consecutive games before losing 5-1 to Tennessee on Sunday in Houston.

Arizona beat Texas A&M on run-scoring infield singles by Easton Breyfogle and Brendan Summerhill in the decisive ninth inning on Friday. On Saturday, Arizona reliever Tony Pluta escaped a two-aboard, no-out jam in the bottom of the ninth as the Cats beat Mississippi State 6-5.

The unbeaten Volunteers were the class of the Astros Foundation College Classic. Defending national champion Tennessee (11-0) swept past Oklahoma State, Rice and Arizona. Four Tennessee relievers shut down Arizona in the de facto championship game of the event over the final seven innings.

Tennessee pitchers allowed five earned runs in three games and recorded 45 strikeouts while holding the opposition to a .204 batting average. Junior second baseman Gavin Killen hit .600 with four homers and seven RBIs in the tournament.

Kansas last played in a Regional in 2014. It’s off to a 10-1 start under third-year coach Dan Fitzgerald and opened its latest series in Lawrence with a bang. Dariel Osoria hit a walk-off grand slam on Thursday as the Jayhawks beat Omaha 12-8. The Mavericks took a two-run lead to the bottom of the ninth inning before Chase Diggins hit a game-tying, two-run shot.

Omaha, which beat then-No. 4 LSU a week earlier on the road, rebounded Friday to win 9-5, but Kansas took three of four games in the series. The Jayhawks are off to their best 11-game start since that 2014 season when they won one game at the Louisville Regional.

KU finished 31-23 overall and 15-15 in the Big 12 last year and had six players selected in the MLB Draft.

Arkansas left-hander Parker Coil hurled an immaculate inning on Sunday in the Razorbacks’ 4-3 win against Charlotte. Coil threw nine pitches in the eighth inning, all for strikes, to fan the side.

Strike three. Strike six. Strike nine.
Sit back and enjoy all nine pitches from @parker_coil‘s immaculate inning 😇 pic.twitter.com/P6p5gcKoYq
— Arkansas Baseball (@RazorbackBSB) March 2, 2025

Even more impressive, Portland’s Ryan Rembisz threw a perfect game — on just 90 pitches! — against Seattle on Tuesday in an 8-0 win for the Pilots. Rembisz, a senior lefty, struck out 12 to complete the 21st nine-inning perfecto in Division I history.

The game at Joe Etzel Field in Portland was attended by 165 people — all of them witnesses of history.

(Photo of Kyson Witherspoon: Alonzo Adams / Imagn Images)

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Oklahoma

Why Oklahoma DE Marvin Jones Jr. Believes Sooners Have Championship Potential

Published

37 minutes ago

November 18, 2025

Press Room

Why Oklahoma DE Marvin Jones Jr. Believes Sooners Have Championship Potential

NORMAN — As Oklahoma makes its final push for the College Football Playoff, defensive end Marvin Jones Jr. knows what it takes to make a run at the national title.

Jones, an edge rusher who transferred to OU before the 2025 season, played for Georgia in 2022, when the Bulldogs won the national championship. Georgia defeated TCU 65-7 in the CFP National Championship Game that year to finish the season 15-0.

The Sooners are fresh off back-to-back road wins against Tennessee and Alabama after a stretch where they lost two of three games. OU is now 8-2 and almost certainly in control of its own CFP destiny.

Jones believes that team togetherness has allowed the Sooners to stay in the mix despite their rough middle-of-the-year stretch.

“It’s just a brotherhood, man,” Jones said. “It’s so special to see. You don’t really have any individuals on the team.”

The long-standing cliche goes that “defense wins championships.” And Jones believes that to be true.

Jones was part of a Georgia defense in 2022 that allowed only 296.8 total yards and 14.3 points per game. The Bulldogs also registered 91 tackles for loss and 35 sacks in their 15 wins.

The defensive end now plays for a similarly stellar defense. Through 10 games, Oklahoma is ninth in scoring defense (14.8 points allowed per game) and 11th in total defense (278.4 yards allowed per game).

Jones draws plenty of parallels between OU’s defensive grit and that of Georgia’s defense when he won a national title.

“The physicality definitely pops off first to me,” Jones said. “In that Georgia defense, that’s something (Georgia coach Kirby Smart) definitely prided the defense on. I think that’s something that we have here.”

Oklahoma’s defense has been brilliant overall. But it hasn’t been perfect.

In the Sooners’ 23-6 loss to Texas on Oct. 11, they allowed the Longhorns to convert on 10 of their 17 third-down tries. Oklahoma allowed Ole Miss to log 431 offensive yards and convert on 11 third and fourth downs, and that helped the Rebels earn their 34-26 win over the Sooners.

The Sooners have one of the best defenses in college football. But they’ll have to be even better to make a run at the College Football Playoff.

From his own first-hand experience, Jones knows that steady growth is necessary for a team to win a national championship.

“None of us graded out 100 on the grade sheet after the (Alabama) game, so there are always things to improve on,” Jones said. “I think that’s it. Our coaches let us know that nobody played a perfect game.”

Oklahoma will host Missouri on Saturday before battling LSU in Norman for the Sooners’ regular-season finale on Nov. 29.

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Oklahoma

Fields floats extending Oklahoma’s school year by 15 days

Published

19 hours ago

November 18, 2025

Press Room

Fields floats extending Oklahoma’s school year by 15 days

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — Oklahoma’s new State Superintendent is considering whether extending the school year could help boost student performance, saying students in other states are already spending more time in the classroom.

Some teachers say they’re open to the idea—but want to know whether it would actually make a difference.

State Superintendent Lindel Fields brought up the idea during a Nov. 9 appearance on News 4’s FlashPoint.

“Imagine if the Thunder practiced 15 days less than the Nuggets every year,” Fields said. “That’s what we’re doing in Oklahoma.”

He said Oklahoma students spend about 15 fewer days in school each year than those in surrounding states.

“Over a kid’s lifetime that’s an entire year less,” Fields said.

He argued that increasing classroom time could improve student outcomes.

“When you think about, maybe where we rank and how much we go to school, maybe there’s a correlation there,” Fields said. “So I think it’s a conversation worth having.”

Oklahoma special education teacher Delana Whitfield told News 4 she thought the idea was well-intentioned.

“I was like, oh, that’s interesting,” Whitfield said.

But she said she wants to see data.

“My biggest question is, is this going to make a substantial difference for these students? And if we can’t support that and provide evidence that it’s actual causation, that the 15 additional days actually provides better outcome for students and there’s not other factors, then I think we need to go back to the drawing board,” Whitfield said.

She and other educators say Oklahoma’s low test scores—especially in reading and math—may be caused by deeper issues than just the number of school days.

“I can think of other ways off the top of my head that I think could have a larger impact on student outcomes for those students,” Whitfield said. “If we had more interventionists in those areas, that we’re spending more specialized time with students that were struggling. If we were to offer more remedial classes for students that are struggling in those areas.”

A spokesperson for Fields told News 4 this week the idea is still in the very early stages—and Fields does not believe it’s the only solution that might be needed to turn around educational outcomes in Oklahoma.

“We recognize that our students currently spend fewer days in school compared to neighboring states,” the spokesperson said. “This is a very preliminary conversation about what adding days could look like.”

Fields acknowledged there would be practical challenges.

“I think most people are on board with that,” Fields said. “But like most things, it comes down to, how do we pay for that?”

Whitfield said she hopes this discussion leads to a broader plan to support students.

“If 15 days additional does show that there is a benefit to it, I think it should be a part of a larger plan because I don’t think there’s one single thing that anybody could do in any position with education that is going to make a substantial change,” Whitfield said.

Oklahoma currently requires a minimum of 165 instructional days per year.

That’s fewer than every bordering state except Colorado.

If the school year were extended by 15 days—up to 180—it would bring Oklahoma closer to the requirements already in place in Texas, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Kansas.

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