Oklahoma Sooners winter/spring sports highly ranked
By Chip Rouse
Football is the foundation and the rock of all Oklahoma Sooners sports, both literally and figuratively.
No card-carrying member of the Sooner Nation would ever dispute that, but largely because of the historic success of the football program, other Oklahoma sports, particularly those in the winter-spring time frame have been able to thrive and compete at the highest levels of their sport nationally.
The Sooner football team got the ball rolling this 2020-21 college sports year, beginning the season ranked No. 3 in the Associated Press preseason poll They ended the season with a 9-2 record and ranked sixth in the final AP poll, and capped the COVID-shortened season and with a 35-point win over Florida in the New Year’s Six Cotton Bowl.
The Oklahoma men’s basketball program, also in the shadow of Sooner football, regardless of how well the Sooners perform on the hardwood, came out of nowhere in the month of January, defeating four teams ranked in the top-10 in the country, three of them consecutively. That incredible string of high-level victories enabled Oklahoma to break into the top 25 and rise as high as No. 7 in the country before stumbling down the stretch.
Sooner men’s basketball has since fallen out of the top-25 rankings, but their success in January and early February was enough to earn OU a berth in this year’s NCAA Tournament as a No. 8 seed.
Oklahoma is the king and queen of collegiate gymnastics
The Oklahoma women’s gymnastics squad, which has been one of the country’s top gymnastics programs since K.J. Kindler became head coach 15 years ago, has won three of the last four NCAA national championships. The Sooner women are a perfect 18-0 this season and tied with Florida for the top spot in the country. This weekend, the Sooners are competing for their ninth straight Big 12 championship and 11th in the last 12 seasons.
The Sooner women gymnasts aren’t the only ones at Oklahoma who are held in high national regard. The OU men own four of the last five NCAA national championships and are ranked No. 1 again in 2020-21.
This is Patty Gasso’s 27th season as head coach of Oklahoma softball. She has taken the Sooners to the NCAA Tournament every season she has been at OU (excluding last season, when all NCAA spring sports were cancelled because of COVID-19). In addition, Oklahoma has been to the Women’s College World Series 13 times under Gasso and come away the World Series winner four different times.
Oklahoma began the college softball season ranked fourth in the national preseason polls. After 22 consecutive wins, 16 of which have been by run-rule, the Sooners have taken over the No. 1 spot in the collegiate softball rankings
Oklahoma men’s golf is also getting in on the national spotlight. The top-ranked Sooner men are coming off a second-place finish in the George Hannon Collegiate Tournament hosted by the 9th-ranked Texas Longhorns. Texas won the tournament, defeated OU by eight strokes, but the Sooners retained the top national ranking.
The Sooner golf team has competed in seven tournaments split between the fall and the spring, winning twice and finishing no lower than third in all seven. Oklahoma has won two national championships in men’s golf, most recently in 2017.