Oklahoma Sooners baseball head coach Skip Johnson helped end the team’s 32-year drought with the 2026 College World Series Finals triumph on Monday. Following the victory, Johnson expressed his desire to see the Sooners football team replicate the baseball team’s success.
According to Josh Callaway, a prominent sports journalist in Oklahoma, the baseball skipper disclosed his wish to three members of the Sooners football team who were in Omaha, Nebraska, to watch the College World Series Finals. “Y’all’s turn,” Johnson told John Mateer, Kip Lewis and Owen Heinecke after the emotional dogpile in the ballpark.
The trio are redshirt-senior stars on the Sooners football team under Brent Venables. Mateer is a dual-threat quarterback who transferred from Washington State University. He bypassed the NLF Draft to play as the Sooners’ starting signal-caller for the 2026 season. Lewis and Heinecke are linebackers.
The Sooners’ football team have won seven College Football Playoff National Championships. They last won it in 2000, under Bob Stoops. Bud Wilkinson (1950, 1955 and 1956) and Barry Switzer (1974, 1975 and 1985) are the only other coaches to lead their teams to championship triumph.
Oklahoma Pitcher Hails Skip Johnson
Johnson reached the pinnacle of his 32-year coaching career with the team’s first College World Series title since 1994. LJ Mercurius, the star of the 13-2 Game 3 win against the North Carolina Tar Heels, hailed Johnson in the postgame press conference.
Mercurius entered the game in the bottom of the third inning and earned the win with a brilliant performance. The lefty pitcher allowed just one run on four hits across 5.2 innings. He allowed no walks and struck out five sluggers.
A reporter asked Mercurius what has helped him reach where he is now after the game. “I think when I was coming into the game, my mindset is alway the same. ‘Take my dreep breath, finish my breath and just execute the pitch,'” replied (timestamp 0:20).
“The biggest thing coming out of the bullpen is Skip’s a genius,” he added. “I listen to Skip. Whatever Skip says, I’m gonna do. Simple as that. So, Skip says ‘take a breath, throw one pitch,” I’m gonna throw one pitch.”
When Mercurius entered the game, the Tar Heels had runners on first and third base. He quickly neutralized the threat, striking out Erik Paulsen, and forced out Cooper Nicholson, preserving Oklahoma’s 3-1 lead.
The highly explosive North Carolina lineup could only muster a single hit against Mercurius in the next five innings. 52 of the 79 pitches by the lefty pitcher were strikes.
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