WEEK 3 SOONER SOFTBALL REPORT: Piling victories on the way to Cathedral City
WEEK 3 SOONER SOFTBALL REPORT: Piling victories on the way to Cathedral City
Writer’s note: I find Oklahoma softball wildly interesting from two different directions.
One, Patty Gasso’s Sooner softball program is clearly the nation’s best and it’s not particularly close. Three straight national championships have a way of distancing yourself. And while it’s been said remaining at the top is more difficult than getting there, I’m not sure that’s true, just that it’s also really, really difficult and thus intriguing.
Two, the way the program tends to be covered is interesting, too. In the newspapers and fan sites, coverage tends not to be particularly analytical and quite a bit celebratory. Three straight national championships has a way of creating that, too.
I’ve always approached things differently, the starting point being that teams, coaches and athletic performance should be viewed, and sometimes judged, through the prism of expectation. It’s the way I’ve always looked at Sooner football and basketball, so why on earth not look at softball the same way?
Today begins what I hope will become a weekly feature of Oklahoma Columnist that I hope readers, even those who already follow the program closely, will nonetheless find to be necessary reading as they continue to follow the program.
With that, let us begin.
The Skinny
Welcome to Week 3 of the Sooner softball season.
The annual Mary Nutter Collegiate Classic’s on tap, though the field Oklahoma will face is not what it’s been in previous seasons.
Played in Cathedral City, Calif. — essentially, Palm Springs — the No. 1 Sooners are the only universally ranked squad in their group.
College softball is awash with polls and, for our money, the two most important top 25s are those of ESPN.com/USA Softball and USA Today/NFCA Coaches, because they actually have independent voters. Unfortunately, they do not update their rankings on Monday (or, at least, not this Monday).
So, as this is written, no Nutter Classic Sooner opponent is ranked in either.
Two polls that actually do update Monday belong to Softball America and D1Softball.com and, in them, Mississippi State, who the Sooners open the Nutter Classic against Friday night, is ranked No. 18 and No. 21.
Wisconsin, San Diego State, Seattle and Loyola-Marymount, also in the Sooners’ group, are not ranked in any of the above.
OU (9-0) will arrive having won 62 straight games dating back to early last season, having just claimed five against weak competition at the Cowgirl Challenge, hosted by McNeese State, in Lake Charles, La.
The Schedule
Last week
— def. Central Arkansas 9-0 (5 innings)
— def. McNeese State 8-1
— def. Lamar 8-0 (5 innings)
— def. McNeese State 3-0
— def. Central Arkansas 8-0 (5 innings)
This week
— vs. Mississippi State (8-1), 7:30 p.m. Friday
— vs. Wisconsin (4-6), 10 p.m. Friday
— vs. San Diego State (5-5), 2:30 p.m. Saturday
— vs. Seattle (5-5), 11 a.m. Sunday
— vs. Loyola-Marymount (2-7), 1:30 p.m. Sunday
Record: 9-0
Winning streak: 62
Numbers
Entering last week
Games: 4
Batting average: .327
On-base percentage: .448
Slugging percentage: .579
Home runs: 8
Earned run average: 0.78
Strikeouts/innings pitched: 17/27
Fielding percentage: .983
Entering this week
Games: 9
Batting average: .346
On-base percentage: .441
Slugging percentage: .581
Home runs: 14
Earned run average: 0.50
Strikeouts/innings pitched: 56/56
Fielding percentage: .991
Leaders
Batting average: Alyssa Brito .417
On-base percentage: Cydney Sanders .524
Slugging percentage: Alyssa Brito 1.042
Home runs: Alyssa Brito 4, Tiare Jennings 4
Runs batted in: Alyssa Brito 9
Earned run average: Nicole May 0.00 (13 1/3 IP); Karlie Keeney 0.00 (11 2/3 IP); Paytn Monticelli 0.00 (6 IP)
Wins: Nicole May 3-0, Kelly Maxwell 3-0
Strikeouts: Nicole May 17 (13 1/3 IP)
Notes on the numbers
• There’s not a whole lot to make of the Sooners’ .346/.441/.581 slash line given the small sample size of the season to date. Still, it’s a bit interesting that over five games against weak competition in which OU’s batting average jumped 19 points to .346, it’s on-base percentage nonetheless fell from .448 to .441. If you’re curious, and for comparison’s sake, last season’s slash line was .366/.456/.666.
• Despite coming against weak competition, it’s notable Sooner pitchers are now striking out as many batters as they’re pitching innings — 56 and 56 — much of that coming from, perhaps, an unlikely source.
In her five-inning complete game against Lamar, Kiersten Deal, who tossed just 27 1/3 innings last season and who exited the Sooners’ season-opening four-game trip to Puerto Vallarta with a 7.88 ERA, shut out the Cardinals, striking out a whopping 10 batters in half as many frames.
• One source it’s not coming from, however, is Karlie Keeney, the grad transfer from Liberty, who, somehow, has a 0.00 earned run average over 11 2/3 innings despite striking out only three batters. It’s all about getting batters out, of course, but that’s bananas.
Notable
Pickering slows down
A trip through the Sooner stats prior to last weekend revealed one new name near the top. Kasidi Pickering, against fairly stiff competition in Puerto Vallarta, returned home with a .455 batting average, a .727 slugging percentage and a whopping seven RBIs, two more than Alyssa Brito, the next nearest Sooner.
After last weekend, Pickering’s now hitting .364 and slugging .500, still with the same seven RBIs. Still plenty good for the Humble, Texas freshman getting her first taste of the college game.
Scheduling challenge
The Sooners do not merely play two games on Friday, but two games back-to-back, the second one set for a 10 p.m. first-pitch against Wisconsin. Then, Sunday, it’s back-to-back again, only early, taking on Seattle at 11 a.m. followed by Loyola-Marymount at 1:30 p.m.
All those times, of course, are Central, which means OU’s playing very late on its own clock to open the event and super early local time — 9 a.m. Pacific — to close the event. It may be the same for everybody, but that can’t be easy.
Clean fielding
OU’s committed just two fielding errors after nine games. Neither of them belong to Tiare Jennings at her new shortstop position. Sooner opponents have committed nine.
Until next time …