OMAHA, Neb. – The Oklahoma Sooners bats have been booming over the past two months, and there’s been no hotter hitter in the Sooners lineup than Deiten LaChance.
Skip Johnson’s club was 32 games into the season before LaChance homered for the first time in a series-opening loss at Vanderbilt on April 9, and since then, he’s clubbed 18 long balls as the Sooners played their way to Omaha despite an 11th place finish in the Southeastern Conference.
Leading the College World Series in hits, LaChance homered twice and the Sooners got four runs with two outs in the fourth as Oklahoma took Game 1 of the Men’s College World Series Finals from North Carolina 9-3 on Saturday, putting them one win away from a national championship that over the past three months somehow went from impossible to improbable to impending.
The Sooners wasted no time getting on the scoreboard, getting a one-out single from No. 2 hitter Camden Johnson. Deiten LaChance lofted a fly ball to the right center field gap that hit the top of the wall and then caromed off the railing in front of the outfield seats for a two-run homer.
For Tar Heels starter Jason Decaro, who entered the game with a 2.31 ERA, a few mistakes led to a rough outing.
“I think they just really punished the mistakes,” Decaro said following the game. “I feel like for the most part made some pitches, and then whenever I did leave a ball over the place, especially with two strikes, they capitalized. And credit to them for that.”
Jake Schaffner led off the bottom of the first for UNC with an opposite field single to left, and then Owen Hull followed him, hitting a double into the left field corner, giving the Tar Heels runners at second and third with no outs. A slow rolling single up the middle by Gavin Gallaher scored Schaffner and Hull to tie the game. Erik Paulsen the doubled off the wall in left center, and again the Tar Heels had runners at second and third with no outs.
After a groundout back to the mound by Cooper Nicholson, Tyler Howe drew a walk to load the bases with one out for Colin Hynek, who scored Gallaher with a sacrifice fly to center to give the Tar Heels a 3-2 lead.
The four consecutive hits were a sign that maybe Rager didn’t have his best stuff, an asked if escaping the first inning having given up three runs having loaded the bases and then had to face another second and third situation with one out, Rager said, “That didn’t feel like a win at all. But I just — you know, after the first inning, I stopped playing for myself. I just started playing for the guys around me, for the team. And I really had to try to really be a pitcher today because I didn’t have my best stuff. I just — after the first, I just really put my head down, tried to work the process Skip [Johnson]’s always taught me and grind.”
After the first, though, the Tar Heels struggled to produce any offense, mustering just three hits, two of them singles by Schaffner, over the final eight innings of the game, drawing two walks and having two batters get hit by pitches. North Carolina only had two runners in scoring position the rest of the game and stranded them both at second base.
In the top of the third, LaChance hit a solo homer, his 18th of the season, over the left field bullpen, to tie the game at three apiece. The homer made him just the fifth player to have a multi-homer game in the CWS finals since the format changed from a single championship game to a best-of-three format in 2003.
Decaro “came to me with two heaters at the top of the zone and I couldn’t get to them as well. I was just always under it and not on time,” LaChance, a junior college transfer who hails from Sherbrooke, Quebec, said. “And the third one I knew he was going to come with a heater, and I told myself, I’m going to be on top of it wherever it was in the zone. And it was not in the zone but I got on top of it. I just told myself that and it worked out well, I guess.”
With two outs in the top of the fourth and runners on second and third, the Sooners regained the lead when No. 9 hitter Kyle Branch singled up the middle to score Brendan Brock and Dasan Harris to make it 5-3. Branch later stole second and advanced to third on a wild pitch, then scored when Jason Walk’s liner at short tipped off the glove of UNC shortstop Jake Schaffner and went into the outfield for a single.
That ended the day for North Carolina starter Jason Decaro, who allowed seven runs on seven hits over 3 2/3 innings, striking out six and walking one before yielding to Walker McDuffie.
McDuffie gave up a single to Jason Walk that scored Branch, and another single by Camden Johnson scored Walk to give the Sooners a 7-3 lead.
After five innings, Oklahoma starter Cord Rager left, having thrown five innings and allowed three runs on five hits and two walks. Righty Gavyn Jones came in and allowed two hits and a walk over 2 1/3 innings, striking out four and walking one.
The Sooners added another in the sixth when Jason Walk singled home Dayton Tockey to make it 8-3.
With one out in the seventh, Skip Johnson called LJ Mercurius in from the bullpen, and he allowed one walk over 1 2/3 innings to finish out the win.
With his team a win away from a national championship, Oklahoma head coach Skip Johnson, in his folksy way, said he’s going to stay out of the players’ way.
“I don’t know any other way to do it. You think we’re going to go out and hit tonight and take 100 ground balls somewhere? We’re not going to do that. I can promise you that,” Johnson said.
On the other side, Tar Heels head coach Scott Forbes isn’t going to push his message hard on his team. He’s done that enough this season already.
“When we get back, we’ll shower, we’ll turn in our [laundry], we’ll have a post-game meal. And I want them to spend time with their families,” Forbes said.
“We’ll meet right before we go to bed. But I’m not going to go in there and try to pump them up. I don’t need to do that with this team. I remind them, man, go to bed and forget about it. Either way — if you win, you’ve got to forget about it because sometimes it can be even harder to get that second one when you win the first one because you know what you’re going to get from the team that lost that first one. So we’ll just keep doing exactly what we’ve been doing all year. And I’ll trust that process and I’ll trust our players.”
NOTEBOOK – Tomorrow, sophomore Ryan Lynch will start for North Carolina against true freshman Xander Mercurius for Oklahoma. … Originally scheduled for a 7 p.m. EDT start, the game time was moved ahead four hours due to a forecast of rain. As predicted, rain began late in the game, with a steady rain starting in the top of the ninth. … Sunday’s game is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. EDT. Rain is expected to continue overnight in Omaha, with thunderstorms expected overnight before the rain yields to cloudy skies in the late morning according to forecasts from the Weather Channel.
Photo: Oklahoma’s Deiten Lachance (48) rounds the bases after hitting a two-run home run against North Carolina during the first inning in Game 1 of the NCAA College World Series baseball finals in Omaha, Neb., Saturday, June 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Rebecca S. Gratz)
