Sunday is do or die for the Sooner softball season
By Chip Rouse
Sunday shapes up as the most important day in what has been another sensational season of Oklahoma Sooner softball.
The Sooners had won 27 of their last 28 games and 16 consecutive contests in NCAA Regional action. And things were very much going their way heading into their 24th appearance in the NCAA Softball Championship on Saturday.
That was then…
Before a stunning 3-2 extra-inning loss to North Dakota State in the OU’s opening game in the Norman Regional left little margin for error going forward if the Sooners were to remain alive in defense of their 2016 national championship crown.
They were playing at home at Marita Hynes Field as a host regional site for the seventh consecutive season and facing a team in their opening game that had an overall losing record in 2017. Things can’t get much better in your favor than that…except when they aren’t.
The loss to the unranked Bison of North Dakota State sent the Sooners into the loser’s bracket in their own tournament, a place Oklahoma has not been in since 2009, which ironically was the last time it faced NDSU in the postseason. The Sooners lost a 1-0 game to the Bison in the first round of the Norman Regional that season.
“Our team looks forward to playing North Dakota State (again), because they feel like they want to make a wrong right.” –Sooner head coach Patty Gasso
Both North Dakota State and OU had to play a second game against different opponents Saturday evening as a result of the rainout that forced the suspension of play on Friday of the double-elimination regional tournament.
The Bison fell to Tulsa 2-1, while the Sooners got by pesky Arkansas 5-3 to live to play another day. What that does is set up a rematch between Oklahoma and North Dakota State on Sunday, with the winner advancing to play Tulsa in the regional final Sunday night.
Freshman pitcher Mariah Lopez started the game against Arkansas for OU but was unable to make it past the first inning, facing just five batters and allowing three runs on three hits before being relieved by Paige Parker
It wasn’t easy, but Sooner head coach Patty Gasso liked the grit and confidence she saw in her team with their backs to the wall.
“That was totally a postseason kind of game where two teams are just punching back and forth,” Gasso said afterwards in her postgame press conference. “We knew we were going to get a fight, and I think it helped bring out the best in us.”
The Razorbacks threated in the top of the seventh. With runners on first and second and nobody out, OU closer Paige Lowary struck out the next three batters to end the rally and the game and earn her eighth save of the season.
So that brings is to judgement day on Sunday. The mission is pretty simple, but the devil, as always, is in the detail: Oklahoma must win two games, back-to-back in a five-hour period, to continue its season.
The Sooners are happy to have another shot at North Dakota State.
“Our team looks forward to playing North Dakota State because they feel like they want to make a wrong right,” Gasso said. “They get another chance at something they didn’t do well, and they like that. I think they like the challenge.”
Oklahoma and North Dakota State are 2-2 all-time. If the Sooners are able to get redemption against the Bison, they will advance to face in-state rival Tulsa for the championship, a team OU has beaten 40 of the fifty times they have played and 22 of 26 times in Norman. The Sooners own a 3-2 edge over the Golden Hurricane in NCAA Regional play.