OU Softball: Bedlam Will Decide Big 12 Title, Tournament Top Seed
By Chip Rouse
OU softball can lay claim to yet another Big 12 championship trophy on Wednesday night and, in doing so, lock down the No. 1 seed in the upcoming conference championship tournament.
And to add an extra in-your-face to this scenario, all of this could take place on the home field of in-state rival Oklahoma State in a midweek Bedlam Series showdown in Stillwater.
A Sooner win on Wednesday night – or, if not, on Friday in Norman or back in Stillwater on Saturday – will be the sixth consecutive regular-season Big 12 title of Oklahoma.
Only Michigan (9), in the Big Ten, has a longer active streak of regular-season conference softball championships than the Sooners.
The last time a team other than Oklahoma won a Big 12 regular-season crown was in 2011, when Missouri was crowned the conference champion with a 15-3 league record. The Sooners finished fifth that season with a 10-8 mark.
Oklahoma State is still mathematically in contention for the league crown and could steal it away from the Sooners with a three-game sweep. The odds of that happening, however, are extremely low. The Sooners have lost two games in a row just one time this season. Cal Poly defeated OU two days in a row, by identical 3-1 scores, back in mid-March.
A three-game sweep over the Cowgirls would give the defending national-champion Sooners a final conference record of 17-1, matching their finish last season and the best in the Big 12 era.
“I don’t look at this (Bedlam) as a rivalry week deal. I’m not treating it any differently than it’s just another really good team like Baylor last week.” Oklahoma State head coach Kenny Gajewski
Oklahoma enters its Wednesday night Bedlam battle with OSU as the nation’s sixth-ranked team, according the to most recent ESPN.com/USA Softball Top-25 rankings. The Sooners have been steadily climbing upward in the polls courtesy of a win streak that spans 21 of the past 22 games and 24 consecutive road games, including all 14 this season.
A single win in the Bedlam Series will clinch the conference regular-season title and also secure the No. 1 seed in the Big 12 Championship, which returns in softball for the first time since the 2010 season. Oklahoma was the last team to win the conference postseason tournament.
Head coach Patty Gasso’s Sooners lead the all-time Bedlam Series with Oklahoma State 83-70, including 13 consecutive wins and 16 of the past 17. As you might expect, however, the Cowgiirls have the overall edge in games played in Stillwater (33-28), but that has not been the case lately, with Oklahoma prevailing the last five times the two rivals have played at Cowgirl Stadium in Stillwater.
In the Big 12 era, OU has done no worse than a split of the regular-season series with Oklahoma State and has won the series in 18 of the 21 seasons the Big 12 has been in existence.
An interesting storyline to this week’s Bedlam softball showdown is the OU connection of Cowboys’ head coach Kenny Gajewski. Gajewski, in his second season at Oklahoma State, played on Oklahoma’s 1994 national championship baseball team and was director of turf and maintenance at Oklahoma for 10 years.
“I don’t look at this as a rivalry week deal,” Gajewski told Oklahoma City Oklahoman staff writer Kyle Fredrickson this week. I don’t know if it’s because I have a history there (OU) or what it is. But I’m not treating it any differently than it’s just another really good team like Baylor last week.”
Looking ahead to the Big 12 Championship tournament next week at Oklahoma City’s ASA Hall of Fame Stadium, also site of the Women’s College World Series, only the top six teams in the conference standings make the tournament. The six teams are divided into two pools. The first, fourth and sixth seeds make up Pool A, and seeds two, three and five are in Pool B.
If the regular season were to end today, Oklahoma would be the top seed and would be paired with No. 4 Texas and No. 6 Kansas. The other side of the bracket (Pool B) would consist of No. 2 Oklahoma State, No. 3 Baylor and No. 5 Texas Tech.
As stated in a post earlier this week, if the Sooners win the conference tournament and do well in the NCAA Regional, they should never have to leave the Sooner State for the remainder of their season.