Oklahoma HC Skip Johnson applauds Cord Rager’s ‘grit and guts’ after early struggles in Game 1
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Oklahoma head coach Skip Johnson was excited to talk about a lot of positive things after Saturday afternoon’s Game 1 victory over North Carolina moved his Sooners within 1 victory of a national championship.
There was Deiten Lachance’s 2 home runs that kept Oklahoma in the game early despite lefty starter Cord Rager allowing 3 runs in the first inning. Rager could’ve let that skaky beginning get the best of him in Omaha, as the Sooners and Tar Heels battled in front of a national TV audience.
But Rager didn’t. He hung in there. More than that, the true freshman shut out North Carolina for the rest of the day. Rager ended up grinding through 5 innings, throwing exactly 100 pitches while allowing only those 3 runs on 5 hits. He walked 2 and struck out 5, and by the time Rager left the game his team had battled back to take a 7-3 lead in the eventual 9-3 victory.
Rager handed the ball to the bullpen, and it did the rest. But Johnson couldn’t have been more impressed with what his star freshman was able to do in the face of adversity.
“That’s what the mental part of baseball is all about, exactly what happened,” Johnson explained to reporters in the postgame press conference. “What the game will tell you to do is back away and make you feel sorry for yourself at times. Just got to stay with your routine, and that’s what I kept explaining to him.”
Johnson’s young southpaw listened and put those words into action the rest of the way.
“He got through that game, through five innings, that’s the sign of a really good pitcher,” Johnson said. “That’s the sign of somebody that’s got a lot of grit, a lot of guts. That helped us a ton.”
Oklahoma is 1 victory away from its third national title, but North Carolina will have something to say about that in Game 2 on Sunday. Here is what the Kalshi market is currently saying about the Sooners’ chances to put away the Tar Heels and bring a national title trophy back to Norman:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
