Oklahoma softball: Sooners win 4 of 5 in St. Pete Elite Invitational
By Chip Rouse
The only blemish on the Oklahoma softball record in the first two weekends of the 2019 season is a 7-4 loss to No. 1 Florida State at the St. Pete/Clearwater Elite Invitational.
In the Sooners first 10 games of the new season, opponents have scored a total of 15 runs. Florida State accounted for almost half of that total.
Five of the top-ranked Seminoles’ seven hits against Oklahoma pitching in game two on Saturday left the yard. Those five FSU round-trippers, off the bat of five different FSU hitters, accounted for all seven runs and provided the cushion for the Seminoles’ seventh straight victory to open the 2019 season.
The loss to the Seminoles followed a masterful no-hitter by OU’s Mariah Lopez in the Sooners’ opening game on Saturday. The junior right-handed starter struck out a career-high13 batters in a complete-game 4-0 victory over Florida Atlantic that improved her record in the circle to 4-0 on the season.
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The fourth-ranked Sooners were unable to put down Florida State for what would have been their ninth consecutive victory to begin the season, but they were dominant against four other opponents over the weekend, including a 9-1 win over No. 18 Kentucky that featured four OU home runs.
Lopez pitched Oklahoma to the run-rule decision over Kentucky, yielding just two hits in 5 1/3 innings of work in the opening game of the tournament for the Sooners on Thursday. Later the same day, OU knocked off Notre Dame 6-2 behind junior left-hander Giselle Juarez, who notched her third win of the season without a loss.
Oklahoma closed out the four-day Florida tournament on Sunday with a resounding 17-3 blowout against overmatched Hofstra.
Five Sooners hit home runs in the run-rule win over Hofstra, including a pair by sophomore Jocelyn Alo, who went three-for-four at the plate and drove in five runs. Sooner head coach Patty Gasso went with a pitcher by committee in OU’s final tournament game, handing the ball to four different pitchers with the win going to Lopez, her fifth, who pitched two hitless innings.
On Monday Lopez was named the Big 12 Pitcher of the Week. She earned three wins in the St. Pete/Clearwater Elite Tournament, giving up just two total hits in 14 1/3 innings while striking out 19 combined batters in three separate outings. One of her three wins was the no-hitter over Florida Atlantic.
Through the first two weeks of the season, Oklahoma leads the Big 12 in batting with a .385 team average and 84 runs scored. The Sooners are second in pitching (behind Texas) with a 1.72 earned-run average and a .118 opponents’ batting average.
OU senior Shay Knighton leads the conference in hitting with a .516 average. Two other Sooners, freshman Grace Green and senior Caleigh Clifton, rank in the top 10 in the league in hitting.