Winning big will always be Sooners' best option
Winning big will always be Sooners' best option
Before leaving the ballpark last Sunday, a bit after knocking Oregon off a second time, claiming the Norman Regional as a result, Patty Gasso said something interesting.
“We needed to feel that,” she said. “It brought out the best in us.”
In context, it made all the sense in the world.
Oklahoma had just captured a character-building difficult victory over a squad that had given it two tough tussles over two consecutive days.
Only five runs were scored total, three for the Sooners and, absolutely, OU must know how to win games like that, must not be afraid of games like that, must find ways to thrive when made to feel uncomfortable.
You bet it should.
Stipulated.
Gasso continued.
“Run-rules do not help the Sooners. Run-rules give us false satisfaction that we are good,” she said. “We need hard fought games like this to take us to the level we need to (be).”
Sure they do.
Agreed.
Also?
Also, any time the Sooners can win like they won Thursday night at Love’s Field, rather than last Sunday, they should take it, love it and wish every victory might be just like it.
OU topped Florida State 11-3, by run-rule, needing not quite five innings to make it so.
The Sooners banged out 11 hits, four of them home runs and two of those from Alyssa Brito, who raised her season total to 17, one from Kinzie Hansen, who raised her season total to nine and one from Tiare Jennings, who raised her season total to 22 and, get this, her career mark to 95, the same number as Sooner legend Lauren Chamberlain, who not so long ago had still hit more home runs than any other collegian in the history of the game.
How about that?
Yet, back to the topic at hand: winning narrowly is empowering and satisfying and, in the long run, makes you a better team.
Yes.
Winning big, however, once the postseason begins, is far preferable because OU’s bound to win 99 percent of its slugfests and not nearly so many of its close ones, especially when starting pitcher Kelly Maxwell gives up twice as many walks and plunked batters as hits: six walks, two hit batters, four hits.
Maybe she meant it, maybe she was looking out for Maxwell’s confidence and perhaps a little of both, but Gasso saluted her pitcher following her fraught and fallible performance.
“Kelly fought her rear end off for this,” Gasso said. “… Holding them to three runs is a big-time victory for a pitcher.”
It is if you like a 4.20 earned run average, exactly what Maxwell managed for the evening after her previous 123 1/3 innings, every previous frame this season, accounted for a 1.87 earned run average.
How difficult was the outing?
Well, after walking Kaley Mudge, the game’s first batter, and retiring the next two, a walk and a hit batter loaded the bases before Maxwell retired Devyn Flaherty to emerge from the inning unscathed.
Two innings later, another plunked batter and the Seminoles first hit of the game, from Kalei Harding, put Maxwell in another fix. A walk to load the bases came next, then a needed strikeout, then a hot shot two-run single from Flaherty that put Florida State on the board.
Walking three, plunking two and leaving five baserunners between the first and third innings alone, giving up a mere two runs felt like Maxwell had turned some type of magic softball trick.
Give Gasso, pitching coach Jennifer Rocha and, for that matter, Maxwell herself, credit for making it work. Not only was it its own reward, but it kept OU’s pitching options open going forward.
Presumably, Nicole May will get the nod for today’s 7 p.m. start, but what if Maxwell had demanded relief and the Sooner bats had not piled runs?
Maybe May relieves, but then who starts today? Maxwell again? And if the series lasts to Saturday, who throws then?
They’re all good questions.
Also, they’re not in play.
Because Maxwell made it through, sure, but mostly because Gasso could afford to try getting her through because Sooner bats were hot.
Brito finished with three hits, Kasidi Pickering with two and an RBI, Alynah Torres with one and two RBIs.
OU scored in every inning, including three in the third and five in the fourth.
It’s the best way to win.
Try to win the other way too often and you could lose and who wants that?
Nobody.
Sooners included.