If it had to end, it couldn't have ended any better for coach Patty Gasso's Sooners
Let it be known the season couldn’t have ended any better for coach Patty Gasso’s Sooners.
It could have not ended, sure.
Oklahoma could have gone super late at Devon Park.
It could have played deep into Monday night and Tuesday morning and all of us could be going on four or five hours of sleep today.
It could have, eventually, won a fifth straight national championship.
Not that it would have made its coach much happier
“This was the most enjoyable season I’ve had in a long time,” Gasso said. “As coaches, we really feel that.
“Everybody kind of jumped on board with us. They believed in what we were saying. They carried on the championship mindset.”
Hard to beat that.
But it couldn’t have ended any better.
For one, it took the best pitcher in the world to beat them, Texas Tech’s Nijaree Canady, whose first two seasons at Stanford produced earned run averages of 0.57 and 0.73 and in whose first season in Lubbock is riding 0.90 over 226 innings with two or three contests to come.
For two, Tech had to beat OU not once, but twice, even in the same game, thanks to the kind of heroics you just can’t make up.
One strike from suffering the program’s first shutout in six years, Abigale Dayton took a Canady offering over the right-field wall to tie it, leaving Gasso smiling in the third-base coach’s box and Sooner fans everywhere losing their mind.
Yet, in the frame’s bottom half, Lauren Allred lifted a sac fly to right field, bringing home Mihyla Davis, handing the Raiders their 3-2 triumph.
Allred’s fly was not so deep and Kasidi Pickering’s throw was up the third-base line, but a perfect strike still would have been late.
So, best pitcher in the world, had to be beaten twice and the victor had to walk it off.
Not a bad way to go.
“I honestly think it was like a very cinematic way to go out,” said senior first baseman Cydney Sanders. “… [That] Abi literally came up and hit a ball like that is insane.”
For the first time since Jocelyn Alo helped slug OU to the ’22 crown, the Sooners were not clearly the best team in field.
They were not a team that posted run-rule after run-rule after run-rule, nor one claiming pitchers that couldn’t be beaten, nor even a consistent No. 2 behind Sam Landry.
What OU knew how to do was win, even if it took Ella Parker going deep to walk it off against Tennessee, even if it meant winning narrowly frequently, sweeping Texas after a pair of one-run decisions, even if it meant the bottom of the order delivering when Pickering and Parker didn’t have the pop.
Gasso again mentioned she’s yet to see her team really celebrate.
It didn’t after beating Tennessee or Oregon in Oklahoma City, or after sweeping Alabama in Norman to get to Oklahoma City, or after topping Cal in Norman to get to play Alabama.
“If we would have won the national championship, I still don’t know if they would celebrate,” she said.
Though that may be unfortunate, it paints a picture of a squad that really believed in itself, that knew what it was capable of, that never expected to lose. Maybe Gasso can work on her players’ joy, but a team like that can go places as soon as next season.
Despite all the newcomers, all the relationships that needed forging and all the chemistry that needed building, they really could have won it all and it took amazing stuff to stop them.
“It’s hard to be sad when you have these girls next to you,” said Sydney Barker, who managed three of OU’s six hits against Canady.
Ella Parker, who wound up the only Sooner with a .400 batting average, had good words, too.
“I’m just so proud of all this team has accomplished, especially just coming from the fall to now,” she said. “We’ve grown so much together … it’s just so cool to see where we ended up.”
They lost.
They didn’t sound defeated.
They may need celebration lessons but it appears they enjoyed the journey.
Gasso sure did.
“I can’t believe this season is over,” she said. “Normally, I’m like, ‘Thank God.’ This was, ‘No, let’s keep going, let’s keep going,’ because it really was fun to watch them work together.”
They worked together right up until the end.
It ended well.