OMAHA, NE — If one freshman pitcher is good enough for Oklahoma, two should be twice as nice.
It was.
Just like fellow freshman Cord Rager two days earlier, Xander Mercurius delivered easily his best performance of the season on Monday night in the College World Series.
After OU closer Jackson Cleveland came in to record a five-out save by getting a deep fly ball from the nation’s best hitter with the tying run at second base and the winning run at first, the Sooners celebrated another victory — and now have a good shot at returning to the CWS Championship Series.
Mercurius did allow three solo homers by Kenny Ishikawa in the fourth inning, Brennan Hudson in the fifth and Daniel Jackson in the eighth. For Jackson, it was his 32nd of the season. Hudson hit his 22nd. But for Ishikawa, it was just his third.
After the game, Mercurius gave credit where credit is due: his head coach.
“The guy sitting right next to me: Skip Johnson,” Mercurius said. “He’s been great. He’s been helping me every single day to get better.”
Mercurius even picked off a runner at second base after a double to end the fourth inning.
But it wasn’t over until Cleveland came in to dramatically record his ninth save of the season and first of the postseason.
“I thought his command of the fastball was great tonight,” said Georgia coach Wes Johnson. “… When you’ve got a guy who’s commanding his fastball to those three quadrants, it does make it tough.”
“He really stayed with the process, one pitch at a time,” Skip Johnson said. “He executed pitches when he had to execute pitches.”
Mercurius said Sunday he was “not afraid” of the Bulldogs’ big numbers, and he seemed to gain confidence from charting pitches in the Sooners’ opening-round win over Alabama the night before.
On Saturday, the 6-foot-6, 237-pound left-handed Rager needed just 88 pitches to finish seven innings, striking out eight with no walks. He scattered just three hits.
The 5-foot-10, 186-pound, right-handed Mercurius wasn’t quite that dominant against a more potent Georgia lineup. But he was good enough against the prodigious Bulldogs: career-high 7 1/3 innings pitched, career-high 104 total pitches (72 strikes) and just six hits and two walks allowed. He finished with a career-high nine strikeouts.
Mercurius (1-2) picked up his first career college win and finished strong before leaving with one out in the eighth. He struck out four in a row across the sixth and seventh innings to raise his total for the game to nine.
The Bulldogs came into the CWS with arguably the nation’s most productive offense: No. 1 in HRs (175, or 68 more than the next CWS participant, Ole Miss), No. 4 in the nation in batting average (.324), No. 4 in on-base percentage (.436) and No. 2 in slugging percentage (.623)
But Georgia Tech ranked No. 3, No. 1, No. 1 and No. 1 in those categories, and the OU pitching staff made it out of Atlanta just fine.
The Sooners (40-22) move on to the bracket finals Wednesday at 6 p.m. The winner there advances to the Saturday-Sunday-Monday best-of-3 championship series, where the underdog Sooners, who finished 11th in the Southeastern Conference standings, also found themselves in 2022.
The Bulldogs (52-12), champions of the SEC regular season and the SEC Tournament, play Texas in an elimination game on Tuesday at 7 p.m. The Longhorns bounced back from their opening round loss to Georgia by eliminating Alabama 14-2. OU beat the Crimson Tide 9-0 in Saturday’s opener.
“You gotta tip your hat,” the Georgia skipper said said about Mercurius. “I told Skip after the game, ‘Xander was impressive tonight.’ “
OU wasted no time jumping on hard-luck Georgia starter Caden Aoki, who finished a complete game by allowing just eight hits but took just his second loss of the season (9-2).
Leadoff man Jason Walk opened things up with a hit for the second straight game, this time a double off the top of the wall in deep right center field.
Camden Johnson was hit by a pitch, and after Aoki threw the ball into center field trying to pick off Walk, Deiten LaChance delivered an RBI with a groundout to shortstop, scoring Walk and putting OU up 1-0.
With Johnson still at second base, Jaxon Willits put a pitch about three feet beyond where Walk’s landed — a two-run home run that built OU’s lead to 3-0.
“Jackson got a big hit where it really settled Xander down where he could just pitch, one pitch at a time,” said Skip Johnson, who called Aoki “a warrior.”
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“They didn’t miss the pitches that I left in the heart of the plate,” Aoki said.
Georgia finally broke through against Mercurius in the top of the fourth as Ishikawa hammered a two-out, solo home run to right field. After Ryan Wynn doubled, Mercurius picked him off before throwing the next pitch.
The Sooners got that one back in the fourth with a solo home run by Brendan Brock, his 13th of the season. That made it 4-1.
Georgia cut it to 4-2 in the top of the fifth with Hudson’s blast to left-center.
Jackson’s 32nd homer of the year finally chased Mercurius in the eighth inning and cut it to 4-3.
Cleveland, postseason hero in both Atlanta and Lawrence, came on to get the last five outs.
Hudson led off the ninth with a single to right, and after Ty Peeples came in to pinch run, Cleveland struck out Kolby Branch for the first out. Cole Johnson entered as a pinch-hitter and was hit by pitch to put the tying run at second base and the winning run at first.
That brought Johnson out to visit with his star closer.
“I thank Jesus, I mean, really,” Johnson said. “I went to the mound with men on first and second, I said, ‘Hey, Jackson — he’s a real religious young man; I love Jesus too — but I just said, ‘Man, He’s with you. This guy’s hit balls on both sides, and he maybe don’t play — I’m trying to paint a picture so he can visualize in his mind what could happen in the outcome. I mean, Jackson’s a really good player.
With two runners on, Jackson narrowly missed Cleveland’s pitch and his fly ball was caught by Walk in right-center as the Sooners were moving on.
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