Sooners Win Rubber Match against Huskers

After winning game one of their series against Nebraska 3-2 Friday night the Huskers came back to win game two of the series convincingly 10-4 on Saturday setting up Sunday’s rubber match.

The Sooners and Huskers were tied 1-1 after two innings on Sunday afternoon, but OU took the lead for good with a three-run third.

Lead-off batter Chuckie Caufield and No. 2-hitter Aaron Reza both got on base with singles and Kody Kaiser moved them over to second and third with a sacrifice bunt.
Kevin Smith and Brandon Moss reached on walks to score Caufield before Freddy Rodriguez hit a single through the middle to score two more runs.

OU scored two more runs for insurance in the top of the ninth, but they were unnecessary as closer Will Savage struck out two and forced a ground out for the final at-bat of the game for a 6-2 Sooner win.

OU pitcher Daniel McCutchen went eight full innings striking out 11 batters. It marked the fifth time this season that the senior posted double-digit strikeouts in a game.

“Daniel struck out a lot of batters, and he’ll tell you that he likes to strike out batters, but he wasn’t being selfish,” Sooner coach Sunny Golloway said. “He forced batters to hit a lot of pop-ups and fly balls, too. You can’t last as long as he did just trying to throw strikeouts because your pitch count will get too high.”

McCutchen was named Big 12 Pitcher of the Week today.