HI NOTES: Sooner game finishes later

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♦ Missouri baseball loses to Oklahoma after tornado delays game (Columbia Missourian) provides a Twitter-view look at the unfolding events of Friday's game (with photos)

♦ Midseason déjà vu: Underperformances hurt Tigers again (The Maneater)

It’s also because this year’s MU baseball team is a mirror image of last year's.

In both years, the Tigers struggled to pick up wins toward the midway point of the season. Heading toward the brunt of their inter-conference play, both squads have been without junior pitching ace Eric Anderson, who is instead riding the pine while nursing an injury.

The one glaring difference this time around is his return is not expected to come anytime soon. Tim Jamieson knows how much of an impact Anderson’s absence has made.

“All you have to do is look at what happened to us last year when he came back,” Jamieson said. “He’s tough, he’s smart, he’s a competitor and he’s one of our leaders. We haven’t had him on the field for four weeks and our ball club has been different because of it, and not in a good way.”

♦ Sooners Walk Off With 6-5 Win Over Missouri In Game One (Crimson and Cream Machine)

There are crazy games and then there is what happened on Friday night in Norman. Sooner starter Dillon Overton struck out the first batter he faced in the game and then nearly seven hours later Garrett Carey won it with a walk-off single. In between those two plays was utter chaos.

The game was suspended in the top of the second inning for a weather delay. A tornado would touchdown near the OU campus and two storms would pass through the area before the game could resume. When the game resumed Missouri's first batter, Dane Opel, went yard with a two run blast that would put the Tigers up 2-0.

♦ Sooners return from delay to beat Tigers in extra innings (Norman Transcript)

OU faced the rain, the wind, a tornado and even a trio of late-inning errors. All will be remembered as part of a character-building, 6-5 victory over Missouri on Friday at L. Dale Mitchell Park.

The victory lifted the Sooners to 20-14 overall and 5-8 in the Big 12 Conference and came in a game that started at 3:07 p.m., but didn’t end until nearly seven hours later.

There was a 3-hour, 39-minute delay caused by the tornado that rolled over Norman earlier in the afternoon.

“It was a long day,” said Sooner designated hitter Evan Mistich, who drove in three runs, including the game-tying run in the 10th inning. “It’s a lot better when it ends like this.”