By Taylor Thomas
Well, if anyone doubted the Oklahoma Sooners after getting their record seventy-one game win streak snapped, all of those doubters (if any) are now silenced. Oklahoma was back at Love’s Field on Wednesday night to face an aggressive Texas A&M-Commerce team in what ended up being a beautiful night for softball. In what was their final tune up before getting their final season of Big 12 conference play underway, the Sooners challenged themselves internally to come out hot and leave no doubt, and that is exactly what Patty Gasso’s team did. We will look back at the dominant victory here as well as look ahead into what the Iowa State Cyclones will bring into Norman this weekend as the Sooners open up conference play.
Kierston Deal took the ball on Wednesday night looking to continue her early season dominance against a Texas-A&M Commerce team that was top five in the country in stolen bases. Deal was able to keep the aggressiveness off of the basepaths in the run-rule victory, giving up just one hit over her three innings of work while striking out five. On offense, something we haven’t seen from this team yet is the early inning offense. Oklahoma knew that they needed to jump on starter Maddie Muller, and that is exactly what they did, led again by two members of the outstanding freshman class in Kasadi Pickering and Ella Parker.
Pickering got the scoring going in the bottom of the first with a rocket out to right field for a two RBI double with two outs. Later on in the inning, Ella Parker launched a three run bomb to right field that chased Muller from the circle and gave OU a 5-0 lead. Oklahoma would continue to shine with the bats scoring on a RBI sac fly in the second by Alyssa Brito, and adding onto their lead in the third inning on two RBI doubles by both Kasadi Pickering and Avery Hodge along with a RBI single by Jayda Coleman to put the game in run-rule territory with a 9-0 lead. Deal would hand the ball over to Paytn Monticelli for the final two innings of work, as she continued the dominance started by Deal giving up one hit and striking out three in the final two innings. The two sophomore arms have been lights out to start the season, and once again showed the depth of the pitching staff as Oklahoma cruised to a 9-0 victory.
Looking ahead to Iowa State, the Cyclones will bring a 9-10 record into Norman having played some common opponents as Iowa State was also in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico to start the season along with Oklahoma. The Cyclones are led by standout Angelina Allen, who currently leads the Big 12 with a .543 average with 8 home runs and 26 RBI on the season. With numbers like that, you can expect Allen to be able to handle any kind of pitching in the country as she is well on her way to an all-conference selection this season and will look to be a main factor as Iowa State will look to pull an upset this weekend. In the circle, it is more of a by committee approach as four different arms have all logged over twenty innings this season.
Both Karlie Charles and Lauren Schurman lead the staff with 29.1 innings pitched, but the arm I expect the Sooners to see the most is Saya Swain. The senior enters with a 2.07 ERA and twenty-four strikeouts across 23.2 innings already this season and has shown some great stuff in each of her seven appearances. We have seen teams in conference play try to switch up looks against this potent Sooner lineup and we can expect much of the same in this conference matchup with the depth of the Cyclone pitching staff. As mentioned previously, the Sooners challenged themselves throughout the game against Texas-A&M Commerce, and you can expect to see much of the same against Iowa State as we know Patty Gasso will be instilling that in the team with a multitude of different lineup options and pitchers at her disposal. All of the action this weekend will be available to watch again on ESPN+ beginning Friday night under the lights at 6pm CT, followed by a Saturday matchup at 2pm CT before finishing up on Sunday at 1pm CT (weather permitting) as the Sooners look to continue to rebound.
