Sooner softball comes from behind to beat Tulsa in NCAA Norman Regional
By Chip Rouse
The Sooner softball squad fell behind early and late in its NCAA Norman Regional final against Tulsa, but in the end it was a two-run round-tripper by sophomore third baseman Sydney Romero in the bottom of the 10th inning that handed OU a 6-4 victory and a follow-up date with the Golden Hurricane on Monday.
Tulsa jumped out in front 1-0 in the first inning thanks to a couple of errors by the Big 12’s best fielding team, and added a second run the next inning on a solo home run by center fielder Shelby Estocado.
Sooner junior center fielder Nicole Pendley slugged her 15th home run of the season in the OU fifth and Romero singled in the tying run in the sixth, knotting the score at 2-2 heading to the seventh.
Oklahoma threated in the bottom half of the seventh, but with two on and two out, first baseman Shay Knighton, fouled out to the Tulsa catcher to end the inning, sending the game into extra innings.
Neither team scored in the eighth or ninth, but Tulsa scored twice in the top of the 10th off of Sooner pitcher Paige Lowary, who had given up only one hit since taking over for starter Paige Parker in the second inning.
Nicole Mendes led off the bottom of the 10th for Oklahoma with a single to right field. Second baseman Caleigh Clifton followed that with a two-run blast that cleared the fence in left and tied the score at 4-4.
Knighton singled through the right side of the infield for the Sooners third consecutive hit of the inning, and that brought Romero to the plate to deliver the final nail in Tulsa’s coffin and set up a winner-take-all championship final on Monday afternoon.
The Sooners banged out 13 hits in both ends of their doubleheader wins on Sunday. OU eliminated North Dakota State with a 10-2 punch out in an earlier game on Sunday. That enabled the Sooners to advance to face Tulsa in game two needing two wins over the Golden Hurricane to claim the regional championship.
One down and one more to go. The winner on Monday on Marita Hynes Field at the Oklahoma Softball Complex will move on to next weekend’s Super Regionals at Auburn as the NCAA Championship field is trimmed to 16.
Auburn was the runner-up to the champion Sooners in last year’s Women’s College World Series.