Oklahoma softball: Is anyone truly capable of dethroning Sooners?

No. 1-ranked Oklahoma softball ran its nation-best win total to 45 over the weekend with a three-game sweep of Kansas.

The Sooners scored 35 runs on 34 hits while the OU pitching staff and defense held the overmatched Jayhawks to just one run, scored in the next to last inning of the series finale on Sunday.

Kansas failed to score in the first two games of the series, but the Jayhawks can take some consolation in that only one of the games, a 19-0 Sooner win on Saturday, ended in a run-rule decision.

That’s probably saying something when you consider that 36 of OU’s 45 wins this season have ended short of the official seven innings with the Sooners leading by eight or more runs after at least five innings.

There wasn’t one phase of OU’s game that wasn’t humming on all cylinders in the Kansas series. The Sooners were a collective 34 of 87 at the plate for a .390 team average, including six home runs. The pitching trio of freshman sensation Jordy Bahl, Hope Trautwein and Nicole May held Kansas hitters to just nine hits in three games with 17 strikeouts and just four walks. The Sooner defense was also excellent, charged with just one error in the series.

If OU sophomore second baseman Tiare Jennings is not the Big 12 Player of the Week, someone or group of someones should be accused of being asleep at the switch. Jennings, who owns the eighth best batting average in the Big 12, collected seven hits in 11 official plate appearances, including three home runs (one in each contest), scored eight times and drove in eight runs.

The real season begins now

All of this served as tune-up for what will be one of the biggest series in college softball this weekend when the top-ranked Sooners hosts No. 7 Oklahoma State in a Bedlam battle royal.

The two teams are tied atop the Big 12 standings with identical 14-1 records heading into the final weekend of the regular season.

Oklahoma’s overall dominance throughout the 2022 season has prompted discussion about whether this year’s Sooner squad could be the greatest in OU program history and one of the best all-time in NCAA Division I softball history. Some even question if any team is capable of beating this Oklahoma team twice in a postseason series. Only one team in one game, Texas, has managed to defeat the Sooners in 46 games this season.

All of that will play itself out over the next six weeks, and the weekend series against in-state rival will be an important test and perhaps the strongest weekend challenge Oklahoma has faced all season. We’ll take a closer look at this series later this week, but suffice it to say, it should more than live up to its Bedlam billing.

If you’re looking for a weakness, save yourself the time

A week ago, we posted an article in this space posing the question: Does this Oklahoma team have an Achilles heel? The thought being that a team that leads the nation in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, home runs and staff earned run average would appear nearly invincible.

If you have to pick at something on a team that has been ranked as the best team in the country since March 2, 2021, the one aspect of this season’s OU team that hasn’t been quite as sharp as previous Sooner teams is the defense in the field. Coming into the Kansas series, Oklahoma’s defense had committed 27 errors in 43 games, two more than the Sooners did in 60 games a year ago.

Recognizing that the defensive performance hasn’t been as buttoned down this season as it needs to be, the Sooners have been spending more time working on that part of their game, particularly since getting into the Big 12 schedule.

"“We’ve always prided ourselves on defense,” head coach Patty Gasso told reporters this past week. “We’ve taken a lot of time in practice to work on defense and just go back to the basics and fundamentals.”"

Spoiler alert to OU opponents the rest of the season: The focus and extra time Oklahoma has been putting in to improve its defensive efficiency is working.

The Sooners committed 23 errors in their first 31 games this season. In their last 15 games, however, they’ve been charged with just five errors. If the defensive improvement continues, this Oklahoma softball team has no apparent weakness. And that spells big-time trouble for every opponent the Sooners face the rest of the season, especially in a double-elimination postseason format.

As things stand currently, Oklahoma has to be the prohibitive favorite to win a second straight national championship and the school’s sixth all-time. With at least four losses separating the Sooners and every other team in the nation’s top 25, there is a discernable gap between OU and the rest of college softball.

This Sooner squad is built to finish what it started back in the second week in February. The only question is, who, if anyone, is going to keep them from finishing it.