The best team ever
OKLAHOMA CITY — Patty Gasso didn’t want to say it.
“I'm going to let you decide,” she quipped to a room full of reporters when asked if Oklahoma’s 2022 softball team is the best to ever do it.
No, Gasso didn’t want to make that determination not long after the Sooners ended their season with a 10-5 win over Texas, securing the program its fourth national championship in six years and sixth title overall.
“I could rank them very, very high, if not the highest,” Gasso said, “because everything they do looks so easy to me, and they do it so fast.”
Indeed, they do.
Like a feel-good television show, OU softball has a way of making you believe everything will be OK, even in the face of adversity. The show’s writers surely aren’t going to put the characters you know and love in that much danger. Yeah, Texas might jump out to a 2-0 lead in the first inning or appear to be rallying in the seventh. But OU’s victories almost feel scripted in how inevitable they feel.
The top-seeded Sooners (59-3) didn’t win with just one way all season. Their bats, which set a WCWS record of 64 runs over the last week, almost make it impossible to create an insurmountable deficit. Their pitching is as deep as any OU squad before it.
And if the pitching isn’t quite there, OU’s defense always seems ready to bail it out.Thursday was truly a culmination of it all.
When Jordy Bahl, the star freshman who made her first start of the postseason, was struggling to keep Texas off the bases in the early innings and OU’s offense couldn’t muster any runs, it was plays like Jayda Coleman’s home run-saving grab at the wall that proved OU might have too much insurance to truly be threatened.
“What's crazy is that we practice that all the time,” Coleman said. “There's [Alyssa] Brito in practice that robs home runs. [Rylie] Boone will rob a home run. And we do that all the time.
“It's crazy that it actually showed up in a game when we really needed it.”
It all goes back to the preparation Gasso references so often. OU has the luxury of what feels like playing in the Women’s College World Series every year, giving them an edge over the likes of a Northwestern or Texas, both of which hadn’t made the WCWS in nearly a decade. And not capitalizing on scoring opportunities against this group?
Good night.
“It's like you blink,” Texas coach Mike White said, “you give an inch, and they take a mile.”
OU scored all 10 of its runs on Thursday between the fourth and sixth innings, which included a Kinzie Hansen three-run bomb in the fifth and Grace Lyons' three-run shot in the next frame. Alyssa Brito deserves plenty of credit as well, as the catalyst for OU’s offense.
Brito hit a leadoff double in the top of the fourth and one batter later, she scored OU's first run on a throwing error. She also drove in OU's first of four runs in the fifth, a two-out RBI double that gave OU its first lead.
Had Coleman and OU’s defense not limited Texas to just two runs in the first inning, OU might be playing again Friday in a winner-take-all Game 3. But as Coleman herself said after the game, it’s far from the only reason OU hoisted its sixth national championship trophy on Thursday.
“I think the catch got us a lot of momentum, but I don't think it changed the game to that's the reason why we won,” Coleman said. “I think there was a lot of really big defensive plays that were getting us momentum. We had big-time hits. We had Brito come in and be our new hero for this game.
“I think it was just a combination of everything. We just had to get the ball rolling. We kind of started a little slow. I was just one of the little pieces that got the snowball going.”
OU’s players and coaches naturally shared an emotional postgame press conference. Gasso will have to replace a loaded graduating class, which, of course, starts with Jocelyn Alo. The NCAA’s all-time home runs leader didn’t have another home run in her final game. Her 122 for her career will have to suffice.
She at least got a curtain-call moment as she walked off the field in the seventh inning for a rare defensive assignment.
“I don't think the moment could have been any better,” Alo said, “and I just enjoyed my time with these girls, and I'm sad that it is ending, but I'm going to just enjoy it. These are the moments that I'll remember forever, but I'm just happy to be going out top and to just know that all the hard work we put in paid off.
“Yeah, I couldn't have scripted a moment any better for me to just exit out of the field.”
OU also loses team captain Lynnsie Elam, as well as Jana Johns, Taylon Snow and Hope Trautwein, all of whom transferred to OU and played integral roles to OU’s success.
Replacing the talent, reps and leadership of a departing senior class is a never-ending challenge for coaches across the country. But OU isn’t just any other team.
“I think this is the best team [ever],” Alo said. “But one thing about Sooner softball, and I've seen it year in and year out, is they just continue to get better. I don't know what holds next year, but I know that they could make a run for the best team, too.”
OU's pitchers finished with season ERAs of 1.16 (Bahl), 1.27 (Trautwein) and 0.93 (May).