Oklahoma softball: Sooners road to WCWS could be bumpy one
By Chip Rouse
The 2021 Oklahoma softball season rolls into the second and most meaningful part of the season this weekend with the Sooners chasing records.
You can be assured, though, the only record Patty Gasso’s crew is laser-focused on is a ticket to the 2021 Women’s College World Series ending in a fifth national championship and third in six seasons.
As the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Softball Championship, Oklahoma won’t have to go farther than 15 miles from home throughout the championship, with the WCWS taking place at the USA Softball Hall of Fame Complex in Oklahoma City.
Of course, that comes with a big “if,” that the 45-2 Sooners are able to make it out of the regional they are hosting beginning on Friday and the Super Regionals to follow, both of which will be at Marita Hynes Field in Norman.
The Sooners will open regional competition taking on Morgan State, an automatic qualifier as champions of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. The game is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. CT on Friday. This will be the first ever meeting between OU and Morgan State, which finished with a 24-15 overall record and 14-5 in the MEAC.
The winner of the Oklahoma-Morgan State game will play on Saturday against the winner of the earlier game on Friday between Wichita State, the No. 2 seed in the Norman Regional, and former Big 12 team Texas A&M, an at-large qualifier out of the Southeast Conference.
Oklahoma and Wichita State played earlier this month in Wichita, with the Sooners winning 14-3 in a run rule-shortened five-inning game.
How credible is Oklahoma’s No. 1 overall seed?
There are some college softball experts who question the validity of making OU the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament, despite the Sooners holding down the No. 1 ranking for the past three months. The argument is that Oklahoma’s RPI (ratings percentage index) has them as the fourth-best team in the country behind Alabama, UCLA (the No. 2 overall seed in the NCAA Championship) and Florida. This is based largely on strength of schedule.
The perception of the Sooners this season is that of a powerhouse offensive team that is beating up on everybody they play. OU’s two losses this season are to a ranked Georgia team (7-6 in nine innings) and to then-9th-ranked Oklahoma State. Oklahoma is 9-2 this season against ranked teams.
Head coach Gasso is quick to point out that this year’s Sooner team is complete enough that it is able to find ways to win, even when the ball isn’t flying all over and out of the park.
Offensively, the Oklahoma lineup has been off the charts this season. There isn’t a weak spot anywhere in the lineup, and the Sooners are on a record-setting pace in several NCAA hitting categories. Overlooked in all of this is the equally compelling fact that the Sooners also lead the nation in fielding, and the pitching staff is as solid and probably deeper than any team in the country.
"“This team is prideful about its offense,” Gasso told the Norman Transcript recently. “It’s even more prideful about its defense.”"
The Sooners have committed only 15 errors all season.
“We will beat a team 14-0 or 3-2,” OU senior slugger Jocelyn Alo told Clay Horning of the Norman Transcript this week.
Alo, the Big 12 Player of the Year and one of three finalists for the prestigious USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year award, leads NCAA Division I softball with 27 home runs is 15 long balls away from setting a new NCAA record for career home runs, which is currently held by former Oklahoma Sooner Lauren Chamberlain (95 from 2012-15).
Second round for Sooners could easily be a WCWS-worthy matchup
If Oklahoma prevails in the Norman Regional, as expected, the Sooners’ Super Regional matchup — the first stop on the road to the Women’s College World Series — is likely to be by far the most difficult of the eight Super Regionals competition.
The same controversy that surrounds OU’s selection as the top overall seed also applies to seeding the Washington Lady Huskies as the No. 16 national seed. Washington, runner-up to UCLA in the Pac-12 Conference, is ranked No. 6 in the current USA Softball/ESPN.com Top-25 rankings with an overall record of 41-11.
The Huskies are projected to be Oklahoma’s opponent in the next round. That should be a serious test of the Sooners’ worthiness as the No. 1 overall seed. In addition to be a solid team, Washington features arguably the second-best pitcher in NCAA Division I softball in senior Gabbie Plain. Sooner fans should remember Plain from the 2018 WCWS. As a freshman then, Plain pitched a 2-0 shutout over OU in the opening round of the WCWS.
The Sooners have been a national seed in the NCAA Softball Championship for 14 consecutive seasons and have made an NCAA Tournament appearance for 27 consecutive seasons, every year that Patty Gasso has been the head coach. This is the third time that Oklahoma has entered the postseason as the No. 1 overall seed (2013, 2019 and 2021).