By Taylor Thomas
Well Sooner fans, the time has come. One word comes to mind when thinking about the team down south; hate. No matter the sport, the OU-Texas rivalry is always the date you circle on the calendar for both players and fans, and this year spells no different on the softball diamond. Everyone of course remembers the days leading up to the regular season matchup last year as Longhorn coach Mike White’s comments about Patty Gasso and the OU softball program lit a fire under our fanbase and softball team. Stars will be all over the field on both sides this weekend in Austin, Texas in what should be yet another intense and thrilling matchup between these two powerhouses in the game of collegiate softball with the No.1 Sooners and No. 4 Longhorns.
Coming off of the weekend sweep in Lawrence coupled with the Oklahoma State series victory over Texas last weekend, the Sooners will enter enemy territory holding a three game lead in the Big 12 standings. Entering at 29-5 on the year, Texas only has those losses to No. 3 OSU, No.8 Stanford, Houston, and No. 7 LSU as they look poised to compete for a spot in OKC in June. Coming into the matchup, Texas holds a team batting average of .377 and are led by Joley Mitchell, who has a .450 average while having struck out just three times. Reese Atwood is back again and has been the team’s leading run producer again this season as she comes in hitting right at a .400 clip to go along with 12 home runs and 52 RBI. Bella Dayton, Mia Scott, and Alyssa Washington all have returned from stellar seasons in 2023 and look well on their way to repeating that success as they help make up the rest of the lineup that features no starters under a .300 average. In the circle, Texas features one of the nations premier pitching rotations that has been led by sophomore sensation Citlay Gutierrez. As a freshman, she burst onto the national stage earning 1st team all-conference honors along with being named a freshman all-american and has only improved those numbers so far this season as she enters with a 6-0 record and a 1.17 ERA in 47.2 innings. Mac Morgan is back as well and gave the Sooners some trouble in the 4-3 Kinzie Hansen walk-off winner in Norman last year as she holds a 1.26 ERA in 50 innings of work. To follow up these two is freshman Teagan Kavan, who leads the team with 68.1 innings pitched and a 1.84 ERA, and will get her first taste of this heated rivalry this weekend. In total, this pitching staff is elite and holds a combined 1.41 ERA and will surely be the best that the Oklahoma team has seen so far this season.
As mentioned previously, this rivalry has given us some incredible moments in recent years with these two teams matching up in the 2022 National Championship Series that saw Jocelyn Alo and the Sooners destroy Mike White’s squad (which I was in attendance for). Last year with the series at home, Oklahoma set an attendance record for a regular season softball game in the Game 1 run-rule victory at Hall Of Fame Stadium that had around 9,000 fans in the building. While we make the trip into the city of Austin this year, you can surely expect Sooner Nation to make the trip down. As they say in the SEC, which both universities will move to this July, this one “just means more”. The series will get underway tomorrow, April 5th at 5:30pm CT on ESPNU, with Game 2 coming Saturday night in primetime on ESPN at 7pm CT before wrapping up the three game series with a 1pm CT first pitch on ESPN+ on Sunday. Sooner Nation, let’s ride.
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