Oklahoma Sooner sports: Reflecting on a championship year in multiple disciplines
By Chip Rouse
OU captures its 3rd NCAA championship in softball in last five years
The icing on the cake, insofar as the athletic year for University of Oklahoma sports teams, came just a couple of weeks ago and in epic style.
After losing back-to-back games in mid-March to Cal Poly, which dropped the Sooners’ overall record in softball to 23-7, Oklahoma reeled off 24 wins in its next 25 games to end the regular season as Big 12 champions for a sixth consecutive season and with a record of 47-8.
The Sooners won all three of their games in the Big 12 Championship, outscoring their three opponents (Texas, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State) by a combined score of 13-0.
Oklahoma began NCAA postseason play as the No. 10 overall seed, and riding a 10-game winning streak, but the Sooners suffered a shocking defeat in the opening game of their host regional, losing to unranked North Dakota State 3-2 on OU’s home field. Before that loss Oklahoma had lost just once at home in 20 games in 2017.
The North Dakota loss definitely got the Sooners’ attention. They followed that game with four consecutive wins, including one over North Dakota State in a rematch and a pair of wins over Tulsa, to win the Norman Regional and advance to a Super Regionals matchup at Auburn.
Having to play Auburn at their place posed a huge challenge for the Sooners. This was the same team that OU defeated in the Women’s College World Series in the championship final the year before.
As things turned out, however, the Tigers posed little resistance to the softball defending national champions. OU didn’t even need three games to get the job done, defeating Auburn twice in as many games to punch its ticket to a second consecutive Women’s College World Series and fifth appearance in the last six years.
The Sooners defeated Baylor in their opening-round WCWS outing, and followed that up with wins over No. 6 Washington and No. 3 Oregon. That moved OU into the championship series against the top-seeded Florida Gators, who also went undefeated in their first three WCWS contests.
The first game in the best-of-three championship series against Florida was a record-setting game for the ages – actually, two and a half games, if your counting. It took 17 innings before OU sophomore first baseman Shay Knighten blasted a three-run home-run in the top half of the 17th to break a 4-4 deadlock and give the Sooners a 7-4 lead.
The Gators got a run back in the home half of the 17th, but Oklahoma held on for a 7-5 win, leaving the Sooners a win away from a College World Series two-peat.
The second game in the championship series, waged some 19 hours after the conclusion of the epic first game, saw OU jump out to a quick 1-0 advantage on a first-inning lead-off home run by the Sooners’ freshman right fielder Nicole Mendes.
Florida scored three times in its second at bat to take a 3-1 lead, which quickly vanished in the bottom half of the second inning when a bases-loaded walk to Caleigh Clifton forced in one run and Knighten followed with a bases-clearing triple for a 5-3 Oklahoma lead.
Freshman Mariah Lopez came on in relief of OU starter Paige Parker in the second inning and combined with Mendes and Paige Lowary the remainder of the way, holding the Gators’ potent offense to just one run over the five innings, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Knighten was named the Most Outstanding Player in the 2017 WCWS.
Only UCLA (11) and Arizona (8) have more national championships in softball than the Sooners, who now have four. Oklahoma is only the fourth team to win back-to-back national titles. Florida did it last, in 2014-15.
Oklahoma ended the season ranked No. 1, which is where the Sooners began the season, ending the year with a 61-9 overall mark. Over the final 40 games of the season, OU went 38-2, the best record during that span of any team in NCAA Division I.