NORMAN — A new era of Oklahoma baseball will begin next week.
The Sooners will begin their first season as an SEC member on Friday, Feb. 14, when they host Lehigh. OU plays its first conference series on the road against South Carolina, starting March 14.
After several years coaching OU in the Big 12, Sooners coach Skip Johnson looks forward to competing in a new league.
“It’s the best baseball conference in the country,” Johnson said. “We’re excited about being members of the Southeastern Conference.”
The SEC is home to the last five college baseball national champions and six of the last seven. Members of the conference have been runners up in the College World Series five times in that span.
During the conference season, OU will host Mississippi State, LSU, Vanderbilt, Ole Miss and Texas. The Sooners will battle South Carolina, Alabama, Missouri, Georgia and Kentucky on the road.
Johnson also believes that he and his staff scheduled a non-conference slate that will prepare them well for the challenge that is SEC play.
The Sooners will play against Oregon State, the 2018 national champion, Minnesota and Virginia at the Round Rock Classic in February. OU also has non-conference games scheduled with regularly-strong programs like Oklahoma State, Dallas Baptist and Oral Roberts.
“I think our non-conference schedule is going to prepare us for conference,” Johnson said.
The Sooners are coming off a season in which they finished 40-21 and won the Big 12. Oklahoma’s 40-win season was good enough for it to host a regional, but UConn bested the Sooners to move on from the regional.
Oklahoma has reached the NCAA Tournament four times during Johnson’s seven-year tenure. OU finished as runners up in the College World Series in 2022, losing to Ole Miss in the championship series. (The NCAA didn’t hold postseason in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic).
The Sooners were picked to finish 11th out of the SEC’s 16 members in the conference’s coaches preseason poll, released Wednesday. Texas A&M is picked to win the SEC, with Tennessee and Arkansas just behind the Aggies.
Perfect Game ranked Oklahoma No. 20 in its preseason Top 25 poll. The Sooners were the ninth highest-ranked SEC team in that poll, with 10 teams from the league being included.
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Junior pitcher Kyson Witherspoon has also collected several preseason accolades for the Sooners.
Perfect Game named Witherspoon a first-team preseason All-American, while Baseball America put him on its second team. Witherspoon, who played his first season in Norman in 2024 after transferring from Northwest Florida State College, led OU with a 3.71 ERA a year ago.
Even entering the gauntlet that is SEC baseball, Johnson is confident that his team will surprise people in 2025.
“The guys came back for the spring ready to go,” Johnson said. “I think that’s been exciting. Fall went really well, we came to fall break healthy, which is exciting for us. Playing in the SEC is like playing in a football environment in a baseball arena. We’re excited about that, we’re excited about our fans.”
First pitch between Oklahoma and Lehigh is scheduled for 4 p.m. on Feb. 14.
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