Oklahoma softball: OU leaves Oregon with new win streak

It might have been a bye weekend, but instead it turned into the most difficult road trip of the 2018 Oklahoma softball season.

The Sooners (41-3, 12-0) lost for just the third time in the 2018 season and the first time in 31 consecutive games, dropping a 5-0 decision last Thursday at Oregon, the nation’s fourth-ranked team.

A couple of years ago, when the 2018 schedule was  being put together, it showed an open date for last weekend. OU head coach Patty Gasso did not want to have her team lose momentum that late in a season. That was the impetus for her reaching out to schools outside of the conference seeking to fill the open weekend dates with a competitive opponent, even if it meant going on the road.

That was how the trip this season to the state of Oregon was realized. In may have resulted in the Sooners losing in a battle of top-five-ranked teams, but Gasso is looking at it in much broader terms: as a valuable learning experience that can help them win the war and the bigger prize is up for grabs in the postseason.

Oklahoma responded like an angered fighter, blanking Oregon-rival Oregon State on back-to-back days, allowing no runs and 10 hits total in two games. Gasso couldn’t have drawn it up an better.

As fate would have it, that challenging trip to the Pacific Northwest may have been prescient thinking on Gasso’s part. The next two weekends represent the toughest part of No. 3-ranked Oklahoma’s Big 12 schedule.

The Sooners have another tune-up game Wednesday on the road at North Texas. That precedes a three-game weekend series with archrival Texas, beginning on Friday. The Lady Longhorns, 10-3 in the Big 12 and 27-18 overall, are two and a half games back of league-leading Oklahoma.

That is followed by a three-game series with another longtime rival, second-place Oklahoma State. The Cowgirls (34-14, 12-3) are just a game and a half behind OU in the conference standings and are ranked 21st in the most recent ESPN.com/USA Softball top-25 poll.

The good new is that five of the six games in those two upcoming Big 12 series will be played in Norman, which almost seems like an unfair advantage for OU. The Sooners are 20-0 at home this season and are a perfect 9-0 in Big 12 play.

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The Sooners will host Texas for all three games. The Oklahoma State series will be split between Norman and Stillwater, with two of the games to be played at OU’s Marita Hynes Field. The Sooners are a staggering 452-60-1 (.883) since 1998 in games played at Marita Hynes Field and 150-33 (.820) over that same period in games played at home against Big 12 opponents.

Oklahoma leads the Big 12 with a team batting average of .332, fifth best in NCAA Division I, in pitching with a staff ERA of 1.07, over one-run less than the next closest team, and in fielding. The Sooners have made only 11 errors in 44 games this season. Their .990 fielding percentage not only leads the Big 12, but ranks first in the nation.

If the Sooners are able to take at least two of the three games against both Texas and Oklahoma State, that should be enough to guarantee OU of its seventh consecutive Big 12 regular-season championship and conference crown No. 10 in softball since the Big 12 was formed 22 years ago, in 1996.

In case you are wondering, Oklahoma’s best season, in terms of winning percentage, under head coach Patty Gasso, was in 2013, when the Sooners were 57-4, a winning percentage of .934. That team was 15-2 in the conference and went on to win the Women’s College World Series and the national championship.

The 2000 Oklahoma team was Gasso’s second best team in her 24 seasons in Norman. That year, Oklahoma won a program-record 66 games and lost just eight times all season. The Sooners were 17-1 in the Big 12 that season and won the school’s first national championship in softball.

Only one school, UCLA, has won as many as three consecutive Women’s College World Series titles. Oklahoma has a chance to equal that record if they can win it all again this season.

Right now, the Sooners are in a strong position to reach the WCWS for a third straight year. You have to get the WCWS, though, before you can win it. That’s why the next two Big 12 series and the games over the next month are so important for Oklahoma’s championship aspirations.