For the first time in five years, Oklahoma softball will not end the season as national champion and college softball's No. 1-ranked team.
All good things at some point come to an end is how some critics might perceive the fall from grace of the seemingly invincible Sooner softball dynasty, but the reality is the descent of head coach Patty Gasso's youthful 2025 squad from the top of things was a short one.
Oklahoma finished the season as the No. 3 team in both the ESPN.com/USA Softball and Softball America final top-25 rankings behind preseason No. 1 favorite and 2025 national champion Texas and No. 2 Texas Tech.
The 2025 edition of Sooner softball featured a roster with 13 underclassmen, five of which were in the starting lineup. In addition, 14 of the 22-player OU roster were newcomers to the squad this season. Despite all of that, Oklahoma went out and won 52 of 61 games, won the SEC regular-season championship in its first year in the conference and made it all the way to the Women's College World Series for the ninth straight season.
After spending eight weeks in the top spot during the regular season, @TexasSoftball returns to No. 1 after winning its first national championship.
— Softball America (@SoftbalAmerica) June 9, 2025
Full Final Top 25 here: https://t.co/F1GCt15w1b pic.twitter.com/63MY17eCh8
Oklahoma softball finished the season as the No. 3 team in the country
The Sooners ended the season as the nation's No. 1 team in six of those nine seasons.
Legendary head coach Barry Switzer liked to say, "It's hard to be humble when you're No. 1." Oklahoma fell a bit short of its ultimate goal this season, but this young group loses just three seniors to graduation and only one player out of the starting lineup. And you can add to that another No. 1-ranked recruiting class.
If the 2025 season of Sooner softball showed us anything it was that this wasn't the end of Oklahoma's long run of success in the sport. Au contraire. Sooner fans prefer to view it as the beginning of a new era of greatness to come.
In all, eight teams out of the SEC finished in the top 25 in the ESPN.com/USA Softball poll and 11 in the Softball America poll. No other conference had more than five teams represented in either poll.