Eastern dropped all three games in its season opening series at Oklahoma, but the weekend wasn’t a total loss for the Panthers.

In the final game of the series on Monday, sophomore right-hander Matt Budde made his first start since coming back from Tommy John’s surgery last season.

“Surgery didn’t affect me much,” Budde said. “I’m pretty much where I need to be.”

Budde pitched four innings, allowing no earned runs, two hits and struck out two in the 6-1 loss and said he was pleased at his first start outdoors.

“I’ve gotten a lot of live action in practice, but it was nice to throw off a dirt mound,” Budde said. “I had the third start of the weekend, so I saw their hitters for two whole games.

“Coach (Jimmy) Schmitz had a good plan of how to pitch against them.”

One drawback for the Panthers was the three errors committed by Eastern in the field.

The only run the Sooners had when Budde was pitching came after a pair of errors in the infield that brought in Oklahoma’s first run.

“They were a couple they didn’t score as errors, but we made some silly plays out there,” Schmitz said.

The middle of the lineup showed promise for Eastern on Monday collecting four of the Panthers’ six hits. Sophomore third baseman Ryan Campbell went 2-4 Monday scoring Eastern’s only run and junior centerfielder Keiji Szalo went 2-4 with an RBI.

The most positive thing that came out of the weekend for Schmitz was Eastern’s progression over the series. After a 19-3 loss Saturday the Panthers came back strong but fell just short of Oklahoma losing 10-7.

“The first game was ridiculous,” Schmitz said. “In the second game we gave up three runs in the first and we could have thrown the towel in but we didn’t.

“The thing that pleases me the most is how much better we got with each game.”