OMAHA — Sunday afternoon the magic that Oklahoma had been working with all postseason, which helped it through a deciding seventh game of the Gainesville Regional and a deciding third game of the Blacksburg Super Regional, ran out.
Or perhaps the magic that Mississippi brought to the table, which guided it from dead in the water midway through the season to Omaha, was simply too much to overcome.
Either way, a heartbreaking 4-2 loss, which earned Ole Miss its first national championship, brought an end to a special season capped by a special postseason run for the Sooners.
A loss at this stage of the postseason is always going to hurt, but the way it happened certainly doesn’t help.
Righthander Cade Horton pitched as well as he possibly could have. He threw 7.1 innings, giving up four hits and two runs with no walks and 13 strikeouts, which is a record for a College World Series finals game.
As was the case in his earlier start in the CWS against Notre Dame, Horton was at times electric, working with a fastball that touched the high 90s and a high-80s slider. Between the two starts in Omaha, he struck out 24 batters and walked one in 13.1 innings.
It was everything he had to give on Sunday. It would have been enough to win on just about any other day, but not this one.
“I just stuck to what I’ve been doing the last few starts, and that was just taking it one pitch at a time,” Horton said. “I just wanted to put my team in a position to win and get ahead and throw strikes.”
What also makes the loss tough to swallow is that there was some tough luck along the way. The Sooners appeared to take a 1-0 lead in the top of the sixth thanks an Ole Miss error on a John Spikerman squeeze bunt attempt, but upon review, Spikerman was found to have been out of the runners lane when he collided with Ole Miss first baseman Tim Elko on the play, which not only ruled him out but also took the run off the board.
One pitch later, the inning was over after a Peyton Graham flyout. And five pitches after that, Ole Miss grabbed a 1-0 lead on a Jacob Gonzalez solo homer.
Despite that deflating turn of events, the Sooners managed to take a 2-1 lead with two runs in the top of the seventh, one on a Jackson Nicklaus bloop RBI double into left field and another on a Kendall Pettis bases-loaded walk.
“They’re going to fight,” Oklahoma coach Skip Johnson said. “That’s one thing that they’ve done all year long. They’ve fought and they’ve fought and they’ve fought and they’ve…
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