Imagine this – You’re the unanimous top team in the country and you just blasted your way through four opponents last weekend, three of whom made an appearance in the NCAA Tournament last year, and two of them were ranked in the Top 10 last week. Yet, there’s nothing even remotely satisfying about Oklahoma’s 4-0 start for Patty Gasso and her softball team. Instead, they are even more edgy and hungry than they were to begin the season.
“I asked the team to rank our performance from 1 to 10,” Gasso said on Wednesday. “I had a lot of 4’s, I had a lot of 5’s and a few 6’s. And we just beat two Top 10 teams.”
As a fan, you have to be ecstatic to hear that. This team has grown so accustomed to winning that merely just walking off the field as victors doesn’t satisfy them anymore. It’s not like the Sooners snuck by their opponents in Mexico. Two of their wins were against Top 10 opponents. They won one of the games by run-rule, they scored a combined 31 runs through the four games, and only allowed six runs to be scored. Oklahoma’s pitching battery tossed two shutouts, and struck out 17 batters in just 27 innings of work. Oh yeah, they also hit eight home runs.
Kelly Maxwell was named the Big 12 Pitcher of the Week for her efforts in Mexico. She earned two wins in her debut outings for the Sooners. She tossed 5.0 shutout innings of one-hit ball with a walk and two strikeouts against then-No. 11/9 Duke in a 3-0 victory. She then followed that up by throwing 2.2 scoreless innings of relief against No. 7/10 Washington, which included entering with runners on the corners with one out in the sixth inning. The victory over the Huskies secured the longest winning streak in NCAA history, breaking the previous all-division record held by then-Division II program Western Kentucky (55 games) for Oklahoma. Opposing batters were just 1-for-23 against Maxwell as she limited hitters to a .043 average and a .197 OPS in her two appearances. This is her seventh time being named Big 12 Pitcher of the Week.
The Sooners return to the diamond this weekend. They will play five games in three days, beginning on Friday, at the Cowgirl Challenge in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
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