Oklahoma softball: Sooners took a huge hit to their high championship hopes

There is no question that the Oklahoma softball team had some wind taken out of its championship sails in its stunning Women’s College World Series loss to James Madison on Thursday.

But if I were you, I wouldn’t count them out.

The other three games on the opening day of the 2021 WCWS all went according to form, leaving the top-seeded Sooners as the lone upset and, quite frankly, what most experts projected as the least likely of the four to result in an upset.

What’s happened has happened, and there’s no turning back for an OU team that many believed to be one track to become the best in an elite Sooner softball history, if not one of the greatest of all-time. So, the question now is, what happens from here and how will No. 1 Oklahoma respond to this shocking setback in its road to another national championship?

To know what the down-but-not-out Oklahoma softball team needs to do moving forward in the WCWS, you only need to look back 24 hours to what the circumstances were in Thursday’s loss that were different than virtually anything the Sooners have experienced all season.

The first thing that Sooner fans need to take into account is that it wasn’t as if James Madison rolled all over Patty Gasso’s team. In fact, with just three hits allowed by Sooner pitcher Shannon Saile — two of those unfortunately clearing the fence and accounting for all of the Dukes’ scoring — JMU managed to do just enough to gain the win.

Oklahoma, on the other hand, had scoring opportunities in the fifth, sixth and eighth innings with runners on base and less than two outs, but couldn’t produce the timely hits like they have all season and move the runners around the bases.

Oklahoma’s nation-leading offense was silent in most of its WCWS opener

It’s true that the OU bats were not hitting on all cylinders like they have in producing the nation’s No. 1 offense this season, but all of the credit for that belongs with James Madison pitcher Odicci Alexander, who pitched perhaps the best game of the season against the Sooners. OU hitters had struck out just a dozen times in five previous NCAA Tournament games, but Alexander mowed down nine Sooners on strikes, seven of those on swinging.

OU’s Jocelyn Alo followed Tiare Jennings’ game tying three-run home run with a single, giving the Sooners three runs in and a runner at first base with no outs in the inning, but Alexander retired the next three OU hitters, three through five in the lineup, two striking out two of the three, to end the threat.

“The next time we come out, we’ve just got to throw punches early and fast and keep laying them down, play like we’ve got nothing to lose.” — OU senior pitcher Shannon Saile

From the fourth through the eighth inning, Alexander faced a total of 16 OU batters, and in three of those innings she faced the minimum three batters.

"“Alexander is really, really good. The ball gets on you really, really fast,” Gasso said in her postgame interview session."

“Some of our plans got lost. You can see that by the way we were swinging,” she said. We need to figure out why. Were the lights to big for you? Was the speed to fast for you? The video will tell us exactly what we need to know, so we can work on fixing that as we move forward.”

Many of Oklahoma swings and misses were the result of the hitters not being able to make contact up in the strike zone on Alexander’s 69-71 mph rise ball. That pitch, plus her ability to mix up her pitches, kept the Sooners off balance at the plate the entire game.

So now the formula on how to beat Oklahoma is out in the open for others in the WCWS to try to duplicate. One thing is for certain. There are several outstanding pitchers that the Sooners are going to have to go through if they are going remain alive in the championship.

There’s nothing Oklahoma can do about the opening loss to James Madison, but the one thing the Sooners can do and must do if they are going to go deeper in this year’s WCWS is to put that loss behind them and focus on what’s ahead of them.

The road back is not going to be easy, but OU has bounced back from tough losses before this season, and the thing they must do now is not allow that one WCWS loss turn into a quick two.

In the press conference after Thursday’s opening game, Saile said she thought she and her Sooner teammates played too conservatively and more not to lose than playing to win against James Madison.

"“It’s loser go home now, and I don’t think we want to go home,” the Oklahoma senior pitcher said. “So I think next time we come out, we’ve just got to throw punches early and fast and keep laying them down, play like we’ve got nothing to lose.”"

To be or not to be eliminated? Two Saturday games hold the key for Sooners

Oklahoma’s immediate next challenge is against Georgia at 11 a.m. Saturday at ASA Softball Hall of Fame Stadium. Georgia handed OU its first loss of the season back on April 20, ending the Sooners’ 33-game winning streak to begin the season. The Bulldogs prevailed 7-6 in nine innings, Oklahoma’s only extra-inning game of the season before James Madison.

That was the first game of a doubleheader, and the Sooners bounced back in the second contest for a 12-3 run-rule victory.

If Oklahoma defeats Georgia, they will advance to play a second game Saturday against the loser of the Friday night winner’s bracket game between No. 2 UCLA and No. 3 Alabama. If the Sooners are still alive after Saturday night, they will need to win two more games to advance to the championship best of three series beginning on Monday.

Awaiting OU on Sunday then will be the winner of Friday night’s contest between Oklahoma State and James Madison. The Sooners will have to beat that team twice on Sunday to stay alive.

The winner in the Oklahoma side of the WCWS bracket will most likely play either UCLA or Alabama for the 2021 national championship.

Clearly a huge challenge, but the box the country’s top-ranked has forced itself into after losing to unseeded and underrated James Madison.

This is not the first time the Sooners have been in this position, but they’ve never remained alive more than three games after losing the opening game. In the five times since 2000 that Oklahoma lost its opening game, the team rebounded to win its subsequent elimination game three times, but on two occasions the Sooners were eliminated after two games.

What OU is hoping for now is to replicate what the 2018 Florida State team did. The Seminoles lost their opening game to UCLA, but strung together three subsequent victories, including a 1-0 victory over Washington to win the WCWS championship that year.

So it has been done before, and Oklahoma aims to channel Florida State as two teams that weathered opening-game WCWS adversity all the way to a national championship.