Weekend Wrap: Oklahoma Got Back to Having Fun and Played Its Best Softball of the Season

Rain on Friday postponed the series opener, forcing Oklahoma and Iowa State into a double-header on Saturday.

Maybe that was a good thing.

Instead of leaving Love’s Field after the 4-0 win, Patty Gasso got to meet with her team as they prepared to get back on the field for the second game.

And though OU won the first game of the day, Gasso didn’t shower her group with compliments or plaudits.

In fact, the conversation took a much different tone.

“The energy in the first game was not exactly what we were looking for,” Gasso said on Saturday. “… I was telling them, ‘this isn’t you.’ This is boring to be honest. It was almost a boring style.

“… So there was just some conversation about who we had been in the past and where we need to go. So game two was fun. It seemed like it went by really fast. And I know it was a shorter five inning game, but everybody was invested.”

Rylie Boone led the charge to raise the energy in the dugout, leading the chants for each of her teammates as they stepped up to the plate.

With Boone as the ringleader in the dugout, Jayda Coleman took charge outside of it.

As every hit came and went, she was on the top step of the dugout and into foul territory, cheering her teammates on and keeping the momentum rolling.

The Sooners appear to have even found 2024’s signature celebration.

Sunday, as OU hammered six home runs, the team greeted each hitter at the plate by waiving their right hand behind their head as they extended their left arm fully out beside their head, virtually the inverse of the sprinkler dance that pops up at middle school socials across the country.

“It’s just some good juju,” co-captain Kinzie Hansen said on Sunday. “We’ve got our thing going and it’s tight-knit and a close circle. So you’re gonna see a lot more of it these next couple months.”

Whatever spurred the change, Oklahoma’s offense came alive. The final two games of the series represented the fourth and fifth times in 2024 that OU has scored double-digit runs, and it left the Sooners all alone atop the Big 12 standings after the first weekend of play.

Sanders Stole the Show

Junior Cydney Sanders wasn’t playing poorly coming into the weekend by any means.

She’s consistently battled long at-bats, driving up opponents’ pitch counts and drawing walks.

But the Cyclones saw her trot all the way around the bases four times this weekend.

Four home runs across any series in impressive in itself. Six home runs and 15 RBIs in March alone is even better.

But the manner in which she evicted softballs from Love’s Field was nothing short of spectacular.

There were no slow drifters to right field off a check swing that barely snuck over the wall. Sanders absolutely hammered all four of her bombs this weekend, including Saturday’s two-run shot that was hit over the four rows of bleachers in right-center field.

“She has been waiting to break out for about a year and a half,” Gasso said. “She has had some streaks. But this is what she looked like her freshman year.

“… This is what it looks like. Some of the swings you’re seeing are just legitimate swings. It doesn’t take much because of the contact and what’s behind their swing is so powerful that it just flies.”

Sanders smashed 21 home runs at Arizona State as a freshman, and she only lost out on the 2022 NFCA National Freshman of the Year honor to Jordy Bahl.

After hitting nine home runs season in 2023, Sanders is already at eight in 2024.

She leads OU in home runs and walks and is third on the team with 20 RBIs while hitting .385 overall.

“I think I’m just focusing on playing free, not really worried about any outcomes,” Sanders said on Saturday. “Just kinda get in the box and looking for a pitch to hit. Not really thinking too much at all. It’s working out a lot.”

As Sanders has come fully online, Tiare Jennings also worked herself out of a minor slump.

Entering Sunday she was 0-for-7 in her last three games, but she ended that stretch with a three-run blast in the first inning.

If Sanders, Jennings, Hansen and Alyssa Brito are all firing on all cylinders together, there isn’t much that won’t work out “a lot” for Oklahoma.

Pitching Staff Reset

Though OU pitched a pair of shutouts last weekend, the performance in the circle was still jarring.

Oklahoma’s pitchers combined to surrender eight home runs across five games, including back-to-back home runs against both Miami (OH) and Liberty.

At times, even Gasso admitted to feeling a bit shocked.

None of those issues popped up against Iowa State.

Maxwell fanned eight Cyclones in her complete game shutout on Saturday. Nicole May and Karlie Keeney combined for five strikeouts in the 11-2 win Saturday evening, and Kierston Deal continued to roll on Sunday.

The left-handed sophomore allowed just one hit in three innings Sunday, and hasn’t allowed a run in 22 innings, a streak stretching back to her start against Long Beach State in Mexico.

“Her pitches obviously are filthy these days,” Hansen said of Deal on Sunday. “But the mentality and just the confidence and the consistency you see from her… My message to her when I go out to the mind right now is a lot different than it would have been about a year ago.

“And I think that goes to show how much she can do it herself now. How much her composure and her self awareness has grown.”

Saturday, Maxwell said the entire bullpen just worked on getting back to the basics.

The approach didn’t change, according to Maxwell, as associate head coach and pitching coach Jennifer Rocha worked to get the mindset right for all of her pitchers entering Big 12 play.

“I think one of the most things I admire about our pitching staff,” Hansen said, “… they adjust and respond so fast. They play so well off of one another. They are cohesive, they are one.

“… They’re starting to feel themselves. They feel the dominance in themselves and their confidence is starting to grow and grow.”

Strong performances from the pitching staff will be necessary as the Sooners will Tavel to Lubbock next weekend for their first true road games of the season.

OU will play a pair of games against Tarleton State on Tuesday before the weekend series with the Red Raiders, who are in the top 25 of home runs hit this year, belting 23 bombs through 22 games. 

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