Oklahoma Falls To North Carolina 6-3 In Game 2, Forces Winner-Take-All Game 3

OMAHA, Neb. - The College World Series got a little less fun on Sunday afternoon.

The Sooners dropped Game 2 of the championship series to North Carolina 6-3, snapping a nine-game winning streak and forcing a decisive Game 3 on Monday night.

After jumping out to a quick 2-0 lead, OU couldn’t keep the bats going and the bullpen couldn’t stop the Tar Heels late.It was a tough one.

Oklahoma had all the momentum after a dominant 9-3 win in Game 1, but North Carolina responded like the good team they are.

The Tar Heels got contributions up and down the lineup and got a huge relief outing from freshman Caden Glauber, who shut the door the rest of the way.

Xander Mercurius got the start for OU and looked really good early. He struck out the side in the first inning and had UNC swinging and missing. But things unraveled in the third.

The Tar Heels put together a rally with hits, a walk, and a hit-by-pitch to take a 3-2 lead. Mercurius ended up throwing a ton of pitches (92 total) and was done after four innings, allowing four runs.

The offense gave us a spark early.

Jason Walk and Camden Johnson set the table in the first, and Jaxon Willits drove in a run with a double off the wall. But after that, OU went quiet against a really good Carolina bullpen. They only managed one more run the rest of the way.

Skip Johnson talked about it after the game: "That's the trick in baseball is not to get away from your game plan and start trying to punch guys out and kind of lost it a little bit. Instead of just trying to throw the ball to the target, he's trying to pinch people out. And that happens... We've done a really good job over the last couple of weeks with it. And we'll learn from it. And that's a good thing."

Jaxon Willits echoed that mindset when he said: "We have a saying, 'Yesterday's dead.' And I feel that's kind of been our motto through the whole year... We're going to go on tomorrow and how we can attack them and how we can go out and win a national championship."

That’s the right attitude. This team has been resilient all postseason. They’ve already beaten teams they weren’t supposed to beat and have shown they can bounce back.

A loss like this stings, especially after how well they played in Game 1, but they’ve been here before. They’ve responded to adversity the entire postseason.

UP NEXT: Now everything comes down to one game on Monday night at 6 p.m. CT on ESPN. Winner takes all. National champion.

This Oklahoma team has earned the right to play for it all. They weren’t supposed to be here after some of the bumps earlier in the season, but they kept fighting, kept believing, and now they’re one win away from bringing a title back to Norman.

North Carolina is a great team with a hot pitcher ready to go, but so are the Sooners. They’ve already shown they can beat anyone when they’re playing their game.

Monday night is going to be electric.

Game 3. One more win.