After losing 13 letter winners and five core members of the starting lineup from the 2024 Oklahoma softball national championship team, head coach Patty Gasso wasn't sure what to expect from her 2025 Sooner team.
Now, after a five-game sweep in the Oklahoma Omni Classic over the weekend and 19 consecutive wins to begin the new season, the OU head coach has a pretty good idea that she has another formidable group that is capable of contending for yet another national title.
The top-ranked Sooners' biggest challenge this season will be successfully navigating through an SEC schedule that ranks among the most difficult in the country, and it begins in earnest for the four-time defending national champions this weekend when OU hosts No. 21 South Carolina, which sports a matching 19-0 record to that of Oklahoma.
As a tune-up to its SEC season-opening series, Oklahoma scored a total of 54 runs on 49 hits in disposing of Marshall and Kansas twice over the weekend, including a 17-1 demolition of a well-overmatched University of Missouri-Kansas City team in the festival finale on Sunday.
1️⃣7️⃣ Runs, ☝️𝐖𝐢𝐧#ChampionshipMindset pic.twitter.com/oINNqg4eVO
— Oklahoma Softball (@OU_Softball) March 3, 2025
The Sooners averaged nearly 11 runs per game, while a superlative OU pitching performance limited the three opponents to a grand total of three runs in five games.
The Oklahoma offense pounded 15 home runs in the five-game weekend sweep, including three each by sophomore Kasidi Pickering and freshman shortstop Gabbie Garcia. The Sooners' 39 home runs through 19 games ranks third-best in the country and exhibits the kind of power that was a hallmark on each of OU's four-consecutive national championship teams.
As impressive as Oklahoma's offensive performance was over the weekend, the Sooner pitching was even more magnificent. The cumulative totals for starters Sam Landry, Isabella Smith, Kiersten Deal and freshman Audrey Lowry were 23 innings pitched, three earned runs, 20 hits and 21 strikeouts.
That was a collective 1.17 earned run average for the weekend.
For the season, Sooner pitchers have posted an earned run average of 1.26, which ranks second nationally to Tennessee, another SEC foe OU will face this season.
Overall, a terrific weekend of work for Gasso's group and an outstanding start to the season, but now the real work begins as the Sooners head into the conference portion of the 2025 schedule.
How difficult will the next three months be? Twelve SEC teams are currently ranked in the top 25 of the ESPN.com/USA Softball poll, including six of the top seven.
5 more observations from OU softball's weekend performance
- The Sooners' weekend of work included 15 home runs, a .445 team batting average and a .909 slugging percentage. One of the 15 home runs was by Maya Bland as a pinch hitter in the 11-0 win over Marshall on Saturday. It was the first of her career.
- Twenty different Sooners (16 players and four pitchers) saw action in Sunday's 17-1, five-inning blowout of University of Missouri-Kansas City. That is the most this season.
- Four of Oklahoma's five weekend games ended in a five-inning run-rule victory. That gives the Sooners' 11 run-rule wins in 19 games this season and 10 of the last 13.
- OU catcher and North Carolina transfer Isabella Emerling was 3-3 at the plate on Sunday with a grand slam home run and seven runs batted in, the most by a Sooner player this season.
- Two of the Sooners' five wins over the weekend were by double digits (OU scored nine in two others and eight in another). Oklahoma has scored in double digits five times in 19 games this season. The Sooners have scored a total of 173 runs, an average of 9.11 per game, fourth-most in NCAA Division I softball.