Oklahoma softball: How Sooners will win their 5th national championship

The 2021 Oklahoma softball season will come to an end on Wednesday.

The only question left to answer is whether the Sooners’ season will end as national champions or as runner up to Florida State in the Women’s College World Series.

Either way, it is a highly impressive way to finish out a record-setting season. But I can assure you none of Patty Gasso’s players are planning for anything less than finishing what they started four months ago when they set out to get back to the WCWS and reclaiming the national trophy they have won three other times in the past decade and four times overall.

For top-seeded Oklahoma (55-4), it will be its sixth elimination game of this WCWS. Thursday’s winner-take-all championship final will mark the fifth elimination game for the No. 10-seeded Seminoles (49-12-1).

Oklahoma will come into the deciding Game 3 with the momentum of a late-game comeback in Game 2 on Wednesday that ended in a 6-2 Sooner victory. That followed Florida State’s dominating 8-4 victory in Game 1 of the championship series.

We know the Sooner fans are going to show up in big numbers at newly expanded ASA Softball Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma on Thursday afternoon, but which OU team are we going to see in what promises to be an exciting and heated battle on the Oklahoma plains. A national championship lies in the balance.

Here are four keys to Oklahoma defeating Florida State and winning a fifth national championship in college softball:

• Throughout this WCWS, the Sooners have been late-starters getting their high-powered offense going. Oklahoma has just 10 runs in the first three innings in their seven world series games. Over the final four innings, however, they’ve scored 30. They need to get off to a quick start in Game 3, get an early lead and keep the pedal down and the pressure on. The Sooners will also feed off the heavily partisan OU crowd support, which is a bigger factor than many may realize.
• It is uncertain who Patty Gasso will give the ball to to start this critical game, but you can be certain that “G” Juarez will be on quick call and will likely see some innings in the game. It will be all-hands-on deck for this winner-take-all final game, and Juarez, of all the Sooner pitchers, gives Oklahoma the best chance to win, even after having thrown over 100 pitches in the Game 2 OU win. The Sooners have won five times in this WCWS, and Juarez has been the winning pitcher in four of them.
• Oklahoma is the best defensive team in the country, but they didn’t play like that in committing three errors in the Game 1 loss to the Seminoles. If the Game 2 defensive effort is what we see from the Sooners in Thursday’s finale, there’s a better than good chance that OU will be hoisting the championship trophy.
• Everyone knows about how explosive the Sooner offense is, but the difference in this game will be strong pitching and a mistake-free defensive performance.

Prediction

Oklahoma 7, Florida State 4