Oral Roberts’ first trip to the Southland Conference baseball tournament was pretty much like its entire season. Every time it seemed that ORU was about to get on a winning streak, a game slipped away and derailed any momentum the Golden Eagles had gained.
Friday’s 6-5 loss to Central Arkansas was more characteristic of the season than the 11-3 loss that eliminated the Golden Eagles on Saturday. In so many games, an error or defensive mistake would turn out to be so costly. And too often, ORU was just one big hit away from victory.
ORU was a bit better than its 25-32 record indicated. The Golden Eagles’ schedule was very challenging and didn’t include any automatic wins.
This season was very reminiscent of ORU’s last previous losing season and non-NCAA tournament season in 1997. ORU was 26-30 against a tough schedule in Sunny Golloway’s second season as coach.
The only other time that ORU did not win its conference tournament was in 1984. That was a miss that was much more stunning and excruciating for ORU, which was coming off four straight NCAA Tournament appearances under Larry Cochell and had been consistently ranked in the top 20 during those years.
The ‘84 team was young but talented. The team rebounded from a shocking 8-0 loss to Northeastern State in the opener and defeated many big-name teams such as Arkansas, Wichita State, Oklahoma and Miami (Fla.), en route to a 36-21 record going into the MCC Tournament at Cincinnati.
ORU won its first two games there and needed only one win in two tries to beat Oklahoma City in the championship round. After losing Game 1 to OCU, ORU carried a four-run lead into the ninth inning of Game 2 and had future major league reliever Todd Burns set to close the game. But OCU scored five off Burns to win 10-9 and claim the NCAA Regional berth at Stillwater, That comeback off Burns, who helped Oakland win the 1989 World Series, was the last major college baseball hurrah for OCU, which dropped out of the NCAA a year later.
If ORU had a team of that quality now, it would have still received an NCAA at-large berth, but the overall postseason field did not include as many teams back then so ORU's season was over abruptly.
The next year, ORU pulled off a similar comeback in the MCC finals against Xavier at J.L. Johnson Stadium to start its streak of 18 consecutive conference tournament championships.
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