Lonni Alameda says coming back against Oklahoma will be a 'tall task'

Florida State is in the very enviable position of playing for the national championship this week — but they’re also in very unenviable position of playing against the 59-1 reigning back-to-back champs Oklahoma in order to take home the trophy. So far, not so good for the Seminoles, who were blanked 5-0 by the Sooners in the series-opener to set up a win-or-go-home game tonight.

With that obvious and ominous fact hanging over her team, FSU head coach Lonni Alameda really didn’t dispel the pressure she and the players are under going forward.

“Yeah, tomorrow’s game to end the season. Yeah so, I mean, it’s a reality,” Alameda admitted frankly in the postgame press conference. She knows the Sooners are a Death Star type of opponent in the championship round and it’s very likely the ‘Noles have met their ultimate match in 2023.

“Oklahoma is 60-1. There’s a lot of teams they’ve beat. We know this is a tall task,” Alameda continued. “They’re a great ball club. I think the so what, next pitch kind of mindset is more about us staying in it, then really making sure that we just can’t give the inches that they got today. They take advantage of them so well.”

When you’re playing Oklahoma softball in the 2020s, to win you must perform flawlessly and Alameda doesn’t think Florida State took enough advantage in a game that was tied for more than half of it. Perhaps, she suggests, it was the raucous Sooner support and overall atmosphere that got to her team.

“But we got outside ourselves a little bit today. It was a lot with the fans and the noise, the moments,” explained the FSU coach. “I liked how we responded. We kind of went in and out.”

Maybe not the most consistent performance, but the Seminoles definitely didn’t give up, per Lonni Alameda. However, if FSU is to win tomorrow and then possibly on Friday, she needs to see more composure out of the players.

“I would like us to stay a little tighter tomorrow. That’s a challenge we talked about in the locker room,” says Alameda.

While they’re down 1-0 right now and Oklahoma looked like clearly the superior side, you’re only one game from being toe to toe with them. Win tonight and end that ridiculous streak and tie the series 1-1 with just one more game for all the marbles. Then, it’d be OU who is under a world of pressure.