OU baseball riding momentum in Super Regionals

They aren’t junkies, but when OU baseball heads to Lawrence this weekend for the beginning of its Super Regional at Hoglund Ballpark, you can damn sure bet they are looking for that next hit of dopamine.

This kind of momentum is how a baseball team thrives this time of the year in college baseball. The kind of momentum that carried this Sooners team through the Atlanta Regional and into their second Super Regional round in the last five years. 

“We trust each other, and we know we’re never out of the game. Whether we’re down 10 runs or up 10 runs, we believe we just have to keep doing our thing, keep trusting our process, and keep doing what we’ve done the whole year,” said Oklahoma shortstop Jaxon Willits on Thursday. “Skip (Johnson) talks about it a lot. Momentum is like a drug. If you can keep it on your side, it’ll do a lot of good things for you.” 

And what it’s been doing is a complete turnaround to the Sooners season after dropping their final four conference series and a short stay at the SEC Tournament in Hoover. 

Since May 9, Oklahoma has hit 28 home runs. This past weekend? OU scored 49 runs on 66 hits in five Regional games. Deiten LaChance’s fourth inning grand slam made a statement. Dayton Tockey’s walk-off moonshot the exclamation point. 

“It was definitely one of the greatest, but I think Tockey’s walk-off homer is going to be the greatest moment for every player on the team for the rest of their lives. It was great, everything that can detail a team win. It’s great right now,” said LaChance, who has hit a team-leading 14 home runs since mid-April. 

A power surge that Oklahoma head coach Skip Johnson saw in the fall. Now that it’s arrived it’s better late than never. 

“I don’t know, think it comes from being on time. I think it comes from those guys believing in each other. Y’all weren’t at Georgia Tech, but it’s a little bitty ballpark, man. It’s small. But I think those guys are starting to get confident,” said Johnson.  “I saw it in the fall. We hit some balls out here in the fall, and they’re really confident right now. You just can’t get in their way — just let them do what they do.” 

REASONS FOR RESILIENCE 

Last weekend’s trip to Atlanta was far from perfect. Oklahoma played 36 innings in about a 36-hour span. The Sooners battled back from five-plus run deficits not once but twice. The power of resilience and belief. 

Here’s the shirt all the players were wearing at practice on Thursday. Yesterday is Dead. pic.twitter.com/AmzYeOjy9f

— Eddie Radosevich (@Eddie_Rado) June 4, 2026

What’s been the straw that stirs the drink for Skip Johnson and his OU staff? 

“Get out and stay out of their way. Really, the biggest thing is you’ve got to stay out of the way and let it take its course,” Johnson said. “Let them do what they do. They stopped trying and they started believing. 

“They thought they could, now they believe they can. You just have to get out of their way. You take batting practice, you take ground balls, you keep doing the fundamental stuff you need to do, and then kind of stay out of their way and hopefully it just keeps carrying over from last week.” 

Perhaps easier said than done. Particularly when you’re staring at a six-run deficit with your season on the line like Johnson’s club was on Sunday evening prior to an eight-run fourth inning. 

“I think it hit them in the mouth, and they just kept plowing away. I thought it was big, and it might have been the turning point, don’t know. Think Trey Gambill said it best after the game we won 15-8. At the end, I talked, then he talked, and he said, ‘Hey, man, tomorrow they’re going to hit us in the mouth, and we’ve got to expect them to hit us in the mouth.’ What we do after that is who we are. We can’t back away or be afraid of it. It’s going to happen,” said Johnson. 

And much like a boxer in the ring, OU did that. And then some. One of the many reasons the Sooners season extends into Super Regional weekend. And most importantly? The kind of baseball that makes you start thinking about a return trip college baseball’s mecca in Omaha. 

“We felt it in the fall for sure, and we felt it that first weekend for sure. That first weekend, we played as good as anybody could play coming out of spring training. Then we hit some lulls in the season and started questioning if we were any good or not,” said Johnson. 

I think we can now confirm. This Sooners team is good. And they’re two wins away from a return trip to the Bluecollar Boardroom. 

RAGER TO GET THE BALL IN GAME ONE

On paper it’s unconventional. But that’s been the way OU has gone about its starting pitching rotation this season. The Sooners started a trio of true freshmen this past weekend in Atlanta. 

It’ll be no different, after all, on Saturday night at 5 p.m. Freshman left hander Cord Rager will – once again– get the ball. 

“You don’t see a team throw three freshman arms and have that get you to a super regional. You just don’t see that, especially in Power Five college baseball. That was incredible,” said Johnson. “They asked me on the broadcast, ‘How did that happen?’ I said, ‘That’s coaching — you have a good recruiting coordinator in Todd Butler.’ And that’s the truth. They got to school, we started trying to teach them, and they’re tough kids. They stay in the moment.  

“I don’t know how they’ll respond to another weekend, but I’ll throw them out there. I know they’ll give us effort, and that’s all you can ask: a championship effort. They’ll do that.”