Sooners trounce Tar Heels which caps unlikely national title run

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) The way its regular season unfolded, a national championship for Oklahoma seemed impossible.

The way the postseason unfolded, well, there was no stopping the Sooners.

OU completed the improbable run to its first national championship since 1994 with a 13-2 victory over North Carolina in the winner-take-all Game 3 of the Men’s College World Series finals Monday night, a performance that featured the prodigious offensive production and clutch pitching the Sooners rode through the NCAA tournament.

“I think we knew the talent was always in the room,” said Jaxon Willits, named the MCWS most outstanding player. “We got hot at the right time, and now we’re national champions.”

The Sooners (43-23) won the Southeastern Conference’s seventh straight title, quite an accomplishment for a team that was picked 14th in the 16-team conference in the preseason, finished 11th and entered the postseason having lost seven of nine games.

To get to Omaha, the Sooners beat No. 2 national seed Georgia Tech twice on the road in regionals and swept upstart Kansas on the road in super regionals. To get to the finals, they beat No. 3 Georgia twice in bracket play.

“They got really confident the last month,” OU coach Skip Johnson said. “They care about each other. They didn’t want to give in. They were selfless.”

The Sooners were back in top form offensively after managing only four singles in a 6-2 loss in Game 2 and handed the Tar Heels their most lopsided loss of the season.

“We ran out of gas when all is said and done,” Carolina coach Scott Forbes said.

When Jackson Cleveland struck out Jake Schaffner to end the game, he and catcher Deiten Lachance embraced and then headed to the dogpile that formed near third base. Players waving national championship towels rushed back toward their dugout to salute the celebrating Sooner faithful on the first-base line, football greats Barry Switzer and Brian Bosworth among them.

Kyle Branch, the No. 9 batter who came into the game 1-of-16 (.063) in the MCWS, drove in six runs with a pair of singles and a home run. His homer came on his last at-bat, just as brother Kolby’s did for Georgia last Wednesday.

“Pure joy. Pure joy for our team,” Kyle Branch said. “I had a teammate tell me I was going to do something special, and for him to tell me that with the way things have been going, it has to be a God thing.”

He joined Dayton Tockey as the seventh and eighth OU players to homer in Omaha.

Willits had three hits, reached base five times and finished the MCWS 13-for-25 (.520). The Tar Heels are now 0-3 in finals all-time.