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Oklahoma softball: Defending national champs begin 2022 still No. 1

By Chip Rouse

Jun 10, 2021; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA; Oklahoma Sooners celebrate after the game against Florida State Seminoles during game three of the NCAA Womens College World Series Championship Series at USA Softball Hall of Fame Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Rob Ferguson-USA TODAY Sports
Jun 10, 2021; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA; Oklahoma Sooners celebrate after the game against Florida State Seminoles during game three of the NCAA Womens College World Series Championship Series at USA Softball Hall of Fame Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Rob Ferguson-USA TODAY Sports /
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The defending national champion Oklahoma softball team will begin the 2022 season exactly as the ended the previous one, as the country’s top-ranked team.

The Sooners are one of three Big 12 teams ranked in the top 10 of the D1Softball Top 25 Preseason Rankings. Besides No. 1 Oklahoma, Oklahoma State is No. 3 and Texas No. 9.

Coming off a 56-4 2021 season that ended in Oklahoma’s fifth national championship and third in the past six years, the Sooners this week were also voted as the Big 12 preseason favorites for the coming season in the annual preseason poll conducted by the league coaches.

The Sooners received 36 total votes and six of the seven first-place votes in the Big 12 preseason poll. The other first-place vote went to Oklahoma State, which came in second in the poll. Texas was No. 3.

This is the 10th straight year Oklahoma has been voted as the Big 12 preseason favorite and 13th time in the past 14 years. Over the past nine seasons, head coach Patty Gasso’s Sooners have a combined Big 12 record of 144-14 and have not lost a Big 12 series since 2011. OU finished the Big 12 portion of the schedule a year ago with a 16-1 record.

In the Big 12 era, which began in 1996-97, OU softball has won 20 Big 12 titles (13 in the regular season and seven Big 12 tournament championships), 14 Women’s College World Series appearances and five national championships, all on Gasso’s watch.

The Big 12 also announced this week its Preseason All-Big 12 Team, which included four Oklahoma Sooners: senior utility player Jocelyn Alo, sophomore utility Jayda Coleman, junior catcher Kinzie Hansen and sophomore infielder Tiare Jennings. All four were NFCA Division I All-Americans a year ago and major contributors to OU’s 2021 national championship season.

Alo is the reigning USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year and 2021 Big 12 Player of the Year.

This is the first year the Big 12 has named a Preseason All-Big 12 Team in softball.

The new season begins three weeks from now, on Feb. 10, with the Sooners on the West Coast to open the season. They will start out with a single game against UC Santa Barbara and then move to Irvine, California, for the Mark Campbell Invitational Feb. 11-13 for games with Loyola Marymount, Mississippi State, No, 4-ranked UCLA and UC San Diego.

The Sooners nonconference schedule includes contests against three teams ranked in the D1Softball Preseason Top 25: No. 4 UCLA on Feb. 12 and a doubleheader on Feb. 26 against No. 15 Arizona and No. 18 Tennessee.

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