OMAHA, Neb. – Standing on second base in the top of the first after reaching on a fielder’s choice and advancing on a single by Jaxon Willits, Oklahoma’s Deiten Lachance stepped on the edge of the bag and rolled his ankle.
After a consultation with his team’s trainer, Brandon Lee, Lachance stayed in the game, and while he limped a bit, it didn’t seem to bother him much.
Lachance went 2-for-4 with a two-run homer and scored three times, while Sooners starter Cord Rager took a no-hitter into the fifth inning, throwing seven shutout innings in his longest outing of the year and allowing just three hits, hitting one batter, striking out eight and walking none as the Sooners rolled to a 9-0 win in their 2026 Men’s College World Series opener.
It “was a single to center, and I should have probably taken third on it,” Lachance said of the mild injury. “And I kind of went easy until I arrived at second, I was like, ‘I should probably take third,’ and I went to take a step real fast. And yeah, I had a bad step on the bag… but yeah, I was fine after that. It was just like a bruise a little bit, so yeah, I’m good to go. I score after that, so yeah, everything’s fine.”
In the first, with Lachance on second sporting a freshly-rolled ankle and Jaxon Willits on first, Trey Gambill hit Tyler Fay’s 2-2 pitch into the right center field gap for a double that scored Lachance and Willits.
In the third, Lachance came up with runners at the corners and grounded into a 5-4-3 double play that scored Jason Walk from third to make it 3-0 Sooners.
Two innings later, with Camden Johnson on first after being hit by a pitch, Lachance hit Tyler Fay’s first offering 409 feet into the left field bleachers and then moving gingerly around the bases to give Oklahoma a five-run cushion. Perhaps it wasn’t as dramatic as Kirk Gibson’s limp around the bases in the 1988 World Series, but the comparison may not be too far off.
“He’s a baseball player. Sometimes you don’t feel good, you play. Sometimes it’s raining, you play. Sometimes it’s hot, you play. Baseball players play baseball, and he’s a baseball player. Whatever the adversity is, he loves to play baseball,” Oklahoma coach Skip Johnson said of Lachance.
Meanwhile, Rager was pushing back the Crimson Tide, striking out two in the first, two more in the second, and throwing perfect innings in the third and fourth, the only blemish coming when he hit Alabama’s John Lemm in the second with a pitch until the fifth innings, when Lemm broke up the no-hitter with a single. After Eric Hines followed Lemm with a single, giving the Tide runners at the corners, Brennan Holt grounded into a 3-6-3 double play, and then Luke Vaughn grounded out to second to end the inning. It was the only time Alabama threatened to score.
“From the lefty’s perspective, he throws on the far first base side of the rubber. So obviously, it’s coming across us, so it looks like it’s cutting, but it’s straight,” said Lemm. “And the sweeper –– it starts behind you. It’s just two really good pitches in the zone that he commanded. For the righties, he obviously also has a cutter and a changeup.”
For Rager, a true freshman from Texas who stands 6-foot-6 and weighs 237 pounds, the season has been a learning experience as Oklahoma negotiated a tough SEC schedule, and he sat for two weeks due to a strained latissimus dorsi muscle that caused him to miss the Sooners’ series against Alabama.
Asked what he had learned over his first season in college, Rager said, “Just being able to mix my pitches better and …don’t fall into rhythms and patterns is kind of what I’ve learned, because I used to just go up there and just throw heaters and not mix anything up, and I would get I got ambushed by some teams and those good teams I can really hit.”
But perhaps all of it combined to help Rager today, as Alabama hadn’t seen him earlier and didn’t know what to expect.
After Walk drew a walk to lead off the seventh, Lachance singled to advance Walk to third. A single by Jaxon Willits scored Walk, and then Lachance scored on a two-out double to left field by Brendan Brock that was deep enough to allow the hobbled catcher to score from second without a throw. A two-out single by Dasan Harris scored Willits and Brock to give the Sooners a 9-0 lead.
L.J. Mercurius finished out the game for Oklahoma, allowing two hits over two scoreless innings.
Alabama head coach Rob Vaughn thinks his team will bounce back from the loss, as they’ve done before this season.
“…We just got beat today. This was not a game we went out there and walked 20 guys,” Vaughn said. “We just got flat out beat. They executed pitches on the mound better, they got some big hits in big spots. They were relentless with two outs, lengthening it out there at the end of the game. So, man, it’s one of those games you you weren’t going to clearly go back and see what we need to do better come Monday. But, man, we got we got 24 hours, we’ll go get some work in tomorrow and get back in the saddle.”
Oklahoma (39-22) will play Monday night against the winning team from Saturday’s nightcap between Texas and Georgia, while Alabama (42-20) will face the losing team on Monday afternoon.
NOTEBOOK – Including Saturday’s game between Oklahoma and Alabama, there has been at least one shutout at each of the 15 College World Series held at Charles Schwab Field. … Rager likely will not pitch again for Oklahoma until the championship series, should they advance that far. … This was just the second neutral site game between Alabama and Oklahoma. The first was a March 26, 2002 meeting in Oklahoma City that Alabama won 1703. … Oklahoma improved to 5-9 all-time against Alabama with the win.
Photo: Oklahoma pitcher Cord Rager (99) reacts at the end of the inning during an NCAA baseball college World Series game against Alabama, Saturday, June 13, 2026 in Omaha, Neb. Oklahoma won 9-0. (AP Photo/Vera Nieuwenhuis)
