Gasso finally makes obvious choice, Sooners win
Here’s an idea.
Throw your best pitcher.
Throw her the whole game.
Or until she must be replaced.
See what happens.
It might even work.
So it was on Saturday, May 23, in Game 2 of the Norman Super Regional, facing unseeded and not very heralded Mississippi State (41-18, 9-15 SEC), facing whiffing the Women’s College World Series for the first time in 11 years, Oklahoma softball coach Patty Gasso finally succumbed to the obvious thing, running Audrey Lowry out to the circle with the intention of letting her go until she shouldn’t.
Oklahoma prevailed 7-1 and will be back in action Sunday, looking to punch yet another World Series ticket.
Why she didn’t do it sooner will never make any sense, though overthinking surely played a role.
Why she removed Lowry after retiring the first batter she faced in a suspended contest at Texas A&M on May 1, when Lowry had pitched well prior to the suspension the day before, made no sense.
Why Lowry started neither of the next two contests against the Aggies made no sense. Why Miali Guachino, rather than Lowry, started against Georgia at the SEC tournament on May 7 made no sense. Why Lowry was removed in the fifth inning against Michigan in regional play last Sunday made no sense.
If Lowry does not start Game 3 — because if she’s taxed and ineffective, better to find out early than to throw her in relief of a tight game; but if she’s fresh, hey, she’s your best pitcher and you’re still facing elimination — it will make no sense.
Saturday finally made sense.
No longer could Gasso tinker with her staff in the name of future gains.
No longer could she worship tomorrow at the behest of today.
Glory.
Lowry took the ball and ran, throwing all seven innings, scattering five hits, walking two, yet none over the first five frames, and striking out only two, but that’s sort of her game.
Of her 87 pitches, 59 were strikes.
Her first three-ball count didn’t materialize until facing Kinley Keller, the sixth batter of the Bulldogs’ sixth inning. She walked Keller, forcing home Mississippi State’s only run. She walked Morgan Bernardini to begin the seventh.
Nine pitches later, the game was over.
Lowry had a perfect game going until Paige Ernstes managed a two-out double in the third inning and didn’t give up another hit until Bernardini’s two-out single in the fifth.
“Extremely efficient, extremely effective, very calm, very confident,” Gasso said.
No thanks to the hopscotch decisions of recent days gone by, but exactly as a No. 1 should respond when there’s no other choice.
“I forgot about yesterday,” Lowry said.
As it turned out, one fine decision led to another, when Gasso, with two runners on and four runs already across in the third inning, called Sydney Barker back to the dugout in favor of pinch-hitter Lexi McDaniel.
McDaniel got what she was looking for and deposited on the other side of the fence, marking her fourth pinch-dinger of the season and her 11th in all, pushing the Sooner edge to what became the final score.
She said hitting coach J.T. Gasso “was like, ‘Just hit the ball.’”
“Just kind of going into it just trusting the process … really not worrying about the outcome,” McDaniel said. “But just going in there with like a strong plan and just focusing on what I can do at that moment.”
She did plenty.
Among ESPN’s softball talking heads in the couple hours that followed, and in OU’s postgame press conference, too, the common refrains were the Sooners’ resiliency, their ability to put Friday behind them, their unwillingness to be done.
I’m sure it felt like that, and still OU (51-9, 20-4 SEC) produced only six hits, scored in only one inning and, after all the runs came across, went 2 for 15 at the plate, drew no walks and got hit by one pitch.
“We swung really well today,” Patty Gasso said.
But did they?
In the fourth, Kai Minor led off with her second triple, but did not score.
No biggie.
They won.
“There was a commitment last night that we’re going to sleep well and we’re going to get this done and that is Sooner softball,” Gasso said.
Perhaps.
Mostly, she put her best pitcher in the circle and her best pitcher pitched like her best pitcher and the season’s still going.
Mostly that.