Gasso, Sooners, make a mess against Bulldogs
Oklahoma's SEC tourney stay lasts one day after allowing 10 straight runs to Georgia
Perhaps the only wakeup call to suit coach Patty Gasso’s Sooners better than the 10-5 elimination Georgia laid on them in Lexington, Kentucky, Thursday night at the SEC tournament would have been a million-to-5 elimination.
As is, the biggest comeback in conference tourney history, 10 straight runs after Oklahoma led 5-0 one batter into the bottom of the second inning, will have to do.
The Sooners clearly need a jolt.
The players, of course, but also Gasso, who’s made a mess of her pitching staff going back at least four games and perhaps many more. Because how is it her best pitcher, Audrey Lowry, ranks only 19th in the conference in innings pitched (114) and her last three appearances have come in relief?
I have a few theories.
Having won the regular season SEC crown, the tourney title’s just not that important.
Nor is earning a No. 1 overall seed at the Women’s College World Series.
Actually, Gasso doesn’t think Lowry’s her best pitcher at all and is trying to elevate Miali Guachino, believing it will make the Sooners a better World Series team.
There’s so little separation among the staff, it doesn’t matter who pitches.
Gasso believes Lowry’s her best pitcher, but is giving every opportunity she can to others to better the whole staff (which only works if the first two options are also true).
“They got us,” the coach said afterward. “They shellshocked us.”
Georgia did, and freshman pitcher Presley Harrison, despite entering with an earned run average closer to 4 than 3, was dazzling, throwing 6 2/3 innings after starter Randi Roelling failed, allowing three hits and one Sooner run, striking out seven and walking none.
Still, presuming Lowry could have retired the Bulldogs in the first inning, wouldn’t it have been nice to see what she could do coming out for the second staked to a four-run lead?
Instead, that honor belonged to Guachino, just as the honor to start game two of last weekend’s series at Texas A&M fell to Guachino despite Lowry being well rested.
It worked fine until the fourth, when Georgia’s first and third batters, Jadyn Goodwin and Gabi Novickas, went deep, cutting the Bulldog deficit to 5-2.
Gasso then went with Allysa Parker, who is neither the Sooners’ best nor their second-best pitcher, who gave up three runs and got one out, leaving after Emily Digby’s three-run blast tied the game.
Then, Lowry entered.
She wasn’t good either, allowing five runs, four earned, and taking the loss, though she may deserve some grace. Starting games is more her thing but her coach keeps choosing others for the role.
Gasso, with confidence, spoke like she had her finger on the pulse.
About her team:
“There was a disconnect, especially in the fourth once they scored five and tied us,” she said. “Our pitching staff started to get anxious, I felt our hitters get anxious, I felt our defense get anxious. There was a glazed look on some of the faces that is not something I’ve seen all season.”
On her pitchers, specifically:
“I don’t want to throw our pitchers under the bus, but they were just not getting outs for us, or just allowing too many hard hit balls,” she said. “And I just felt like, after that, we just couldn’t grab momentum.”
About what’s next:
“We all had a conversation and just decided to go back to Norman and just practice harder, do things sharper, like clean up practice instead of going through the motions like we’ve got it,” she said. “Let’s really, really press … throughout the entire practice, to the point of exhaustion, and you should keep asking for more and more and more and more until your hands bleed.”
She kind of said it like she knew a game like Thursday’s was coming.
Wait, new theory.
Patty Gasso, mad softball genius, felt it coming and has been trying to usher it in, certain her team needed a lesson in humility more than it needed an SEC championship and before NCAA play begins.
If so, two things.
One, she’ll never admit it.
Two, she’s not just the best Sooner coach of them all, but better than John Wooden, Scotty Bowman, Casey Stengel, Bill Belichick, Herb Brooks and Gene Hackman in “Hoosiers,” too.
Even if that’s it, she must still go about dragging her team out of a ditch.
You thought Kasidi Pickering had emerged from her slump? Not really. Despite two big hits at A&M, she’s still 2 for 8 over her last three games, striking out twice against Harrison.
Meanwhile, Kendall Wells has entered a slump, appearing uncomfortable as she sits on 36 home runs, the last one hit six games ago against Georgia.
Since, she’s 1 for 14 with a single.
Kai Minor’s been on fire, and Thursday it was another home run and two doubles, but she’s supposed to be a table setter.
Should she bat fourth?
As amazing as Harrison was in the circle, she was equally amazing speaking to ESPN’s Holly Rowe after the final out.
Rowe asked how she put it together after Minor took her deep.
“Everybody in college softball is good,” she said. “You got to go next pitch, and who cares what happened the one before. You’ve got to keep moving on and that’s why you get better.”
It wasn’t the words.
It was how sure she sounded.
Like a sixth-year senior, not a teenager.
The Sooners?
They need to appear as sure as Harrison sounded.
“Sooners bounce back,” Gasso said. “They know how to, they always have.”
They have before.
Also, throwing her best pitcher in the first inning, not the fourth, after two others have already failed, might help, too.
Clay Horning is asking the right question and not quite saying the hard thing out loud, so I will.
Audrey Lowry is Oklahoma’s best pitcher. She entered Thursday’s game in the fourth inning — after two other pitchers had already surrendered a 5-0 lead and watched it become a 5-5 tie. She allowed five more runs and took the loss. That is not a pitching problem. That is a deployment problem, and it belongs entirely to Patty Gasso.
Horning floats the “mad genius” theory — that Gasso saw this loss coming and engineered it as a humility lesson before the Women’s College World Series. It’s a generous read. It might even be correct. Gasso has earned that benefit of the doubt more than almost any coach alive. But here’s the thing about that theory: it only works if the lesson lands. And right now, Kendall Wells is 1 for 14 with a single over six games, Kasidi Pickering can’t find her footing, and the team that looked like a dynasty in March is going back to Norman to practice until their hands bleed.
That is not a team that needed a humility lesson.
That is a team that needed its best pitcher in the first inning.
Presley Harrison — a freshman — showed Oklahoma exactly what that looks like Thursday night. 6 2/3 innings, three hits, one run, seven strikeouts, zero walks, after her starter failed. Harrison didn’t manage the moment. She owned it. When ESPN asked how she refocused after Kai Minor took her deep, she didn’t talk about her feelings. She said next pitch. That’s it. That’s the whole answer.
The Sooners are talented enough to make a deep run at the WCWS. Kai Minor is on fire. The lineup, when it clicks, is as good as anyone’s in the country. And Gasso is right that this team knows how to bounce back — the résumé supports it.
But Lowry pitches first. That part isn’t complicated.