Sun sets on Team Oklahoma

Arizona takes 33rd Annual Sunbelt Classic

By Michael Kinney

NORMAN — Chris and Jeff Hinckley thought they had a chance to win. Team Oklahoma hadn’t won the Sunbelt Classic since 2004 and he believed their fortunes were going to turn around this year.

Unfortunately for the Hinckleys and the rest of the Oklahoma squad, a mixture of bad luck, bad matchups and good teams prevented them from claiming the 33rd Annual Sunbelt Classic title last week.

The Oklahomans downed Illinois 11-3 in the seventh-place game at Noble Saturday. They finished with a 2-6 record over the five day pool-play tournament.

Through the first four games of the tourney, Oklahoma was anything but stellar. The Oklahomans carried an 0-4 record into Thursday night’s game after a 16-1 thrashing earlier in the day versus Georgia. They knew they needed to beat Team Canada in order to salvage the rest of their tournament.

Oklahoma was able to put a complete game together and defeated Canada 14-3 in five innings at Norman High to round out the day, and get its first win.

“It feels really good after the tough losses we had against Arizona and Illinois,” Moore’s Chris Hinckley said. “This one was kind of good because we can kind of relax and enjoy the win after a tough first four games.”

It was Chris Hinckley’s play in the pivotal third inning that exemplified how much Oklahoma wanted to win. After fouling a pitch off his knee earlier in the game, a gimpy Hinckley forced himself to block out the pain.

“We talked about that,” Coach Darrell Palmer said. “Life sometimes hands you bad apples. But you can still get up and go get what you want. We have a chance to go play for third. And that would be a good thing.”

In the third inning, with two runners on base, Hinckley lined a hit to center field. As he headed into second, the throw from the outfield flew past the cutoff man and Hinckley kept on running for an inside-the-park home run.

“You get injured and yeah, it hurts,” Hinckley said. “But once you are in the game, you just want to perform and help your team out. That was all I was trying to do, just try and get the run across and help my team win.”

Oklahoma scored eight runs in the third, including a two-run homer by Alex Pando.

Matt Mason picked up the win after allowing three runs in five innings.

“It’s pretty big to be the one to get us the first win,” Mason said. “I just threw strikes. Our mindset was we have got to win one. We want to play for third.”

Coming into the tournament, Oklahoma had designs on winning the title. But that soon changed to making it to the third place game. In order for that to have happened they needed to beat Ohio and rival Texas Friday. Neither happened.

Oklahoma went into Friday’s Red River rivalry game reeling, and coming off a 25-1 thumping earlier in the day to Ohio.

Oklahoma took an early lead. But an error with two outs in the fifth inning led to a big Texas rally, and things fell apart in a hurry as Texas won 11-5.

That’s just another piece of the Sunbelt’s biggest rivalry.

The two teams always meet under the lights on Friday. Though they’ve met just once in the championship round, that Friday night game has decided which team went to the final plenty of times.

Texas got the best of Oklahoma for the 2005 championship at OU’s L. Dale Mitchell Park.

“A lot of times, it’s Oklahoma and Texas playing for a spot in the final,” starting pitcher Ryan Gibson said. “And every Friday night, it’s tradition, it’s Oklahoma and Texas.”

For the Texas players, winning is always nice, but beating Oklahoma is always a little nicer.

“It’s great because there’s a lot of people in the stands, more than I expected,” Texas’ Josh Elander said. “Oklahoma has great baseball year in and year out. You know they’re going to be tough.”

After all, the rivalry between the Sooners and Longhorns is one of the biggest in the country, and there’s even more behind the two states’ rivalry.

In 1919, Texas Rangers drove off an Oklahoma oil-testing crew from the disputed banks of the Red River. And the Oklahoma governor even showed up at the border once in an Army tank.

Fortunately, the Sunbelt rivalry is a little more on the good-natured side.

“I’m going to TCU, but I’ll always be a Longhorn at heart,” Elander said with a laugh. “The same goes for everybody (in the dugout).”

The old slogan goes, “Everything’s bigger in Texas.”

It’s up in the air on whether the Sunbelt will come back to Cleveland County next year. After six year, organizers will discuss whether it’s worth bring back in the future.

If this year was the last, neither Texas nor Oklahoma claimed the final title in Cleveland County. Arizona handed Texas it’s only defeat (10-7) of the tournament when they faced off in the title game Saturday at Norman High.

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