OU softball in that rare spot, trying to find 'it' again
You could tell OU softball head coach Patty Gasso was having trouble putting it into words. Following a shocking 9-4 loss to BYU at Love’s Field on Friday, she kept stressing this isn’t it.
In this way, the ‘it’ can be hard to define. It when it comes to OU has meant consistent greatness, a standard that no other softball team has been able to reach lately.
But after the last two weeks, it’s clear right now the Sooners don’t have the it. Well, at least right now. Losing three games in two weeks is not the end of the world, but it is when you never see it happen like at OU.
Still, the Sooners remain a game up on the rest of the field for the Big 12 championship. At 15-3 in league play, OU leads Texas (14-4) and Oklahoma State (13-5). OU is still in the hunt for the No. 1 overall seed.
However, it’s about the response from last weekend that will obviously dictate where things go from here.
“Not good enough. Not gritty enough,” Gasso said. “We can’t rely on one arm, and we need fighters. And I’m not making excuses for anybody. But it’s hard sometimes to play in this program because of the expectations. And the pitchers really want to be perfect. And when you’re trying to be perfect, you’re not going to be perfect. When you’re trying to be perfect at the plate. You’re gonna be you’re gonna be frozen, you’re gonna be stuck. And we just got to get the ball and just have a mentality of like, ‘Me and you, let’s go, me against you. Let’s go.’
“And we’re just we’re just really trying to be too perfect with things and it’s just not. There’s just not a good feel to it. We just we just got to trust our stuff and we just got to be that just gritty type of pitching staff. Sometimes we look that way and sometimes we don’t tonight we did not.”
The good thing, though? OU knows what the it looks like. Especially the group of seniors leading the Sooners this season. They know. Someone like Kinzie Hansen or Tiare Jennings, the co-captains, they know.
Gasso challenged them to be the spark to get the rest of the team going. It worked in a Saturday win vs. BYU, Alyssa Brito heard the message with four RBIs. And now the next step is vs. Tulsa 6 p.m. Tuesday in Oklahoma City.
“So it hurts, but what do you do when you get knocked down? What do you do when you’re hurt? What do you do? You fix it. You fight for it, work extra. You do the right things, or you don’t. So we have to have a full buy-in, and there is sometimes where there are three or four that are really bought-in, and then the others are maybe just kinda rolling. ‘We’re good enough. I don’t know.’
“So it’s gonna have to catch fire. It’s gonna take fire for this team, and it’s gotta come — mainly the seniors are gonna have to step forward with that and say, ‘Now we’re leading, and here we are. We’re leading.’ There’s 10 of them. Take these two, we’ve got 10 of them. And I’ve got a lot of willing followers, as well. But as uncomfortable as this is, it’s absolutely necessary with where this team is right now.”
Tulsa split a pair of games vs. Oklahoma State this season. So, again, if OU hasn’t made the internal strides in the last 72 hours, it will show up at USA Softball Hall of Fame Stadium. OU stays in the state and will host last-place Houston from Friday-Sunday in Norman.
