Patty Gasso on losing chance to win another national championship: 'No one's feeling sorry for me'

The Oklahoma Sooners and head coach Patty Gasso have been the dominant force in college softball in recent seasons. However, after getting eliminated by the Texas Tech Red Raiders, the Sooners won’t be able to add to their national championship total.

After the game, Gasso was emotional. She both praised her team’s effort and reflected on missing out on the chance to win another championship. At the same time, she admitted that nobody outside of the program feels bad.

“I haven’t felt this in a while,” Patty Gasso said. “So, no one’s feeling sorry for me about that, I’m sure, but you always want to raise a trophy and just celebrate down at Toby Keith’s place. That’s kind of been our place the last four years. I don’t know. It’s hard to talk about.”

Oklahoma went into action on Monday needing to get two wins against Texas Tech. They’d make it dramatic, too, tying the game in the top of the seventh inning on a home run from Abby Dayton. However, the Sooners would give up the game-winning run a half inning later, eliminating them from the Women’s College World Series.

“I’m really excited for the future,” Gasso said. “But really, really pumped for Cyd Sanders to have her best softball when it was needed. It finished that way. Tonight was a tough night for Sam Landry. A lot of emotions for her because of her connection to Louisiana and now all of them at Texas Tech. I was really proud of her because that could have been a very tough situation. She handled it really, really well. There was a lot of emotions going on for her.”

The loss meant that the Oklahoma Sooners won’t win their fifth-straight national championship. Instead, that honor is going to go to either Texas or Texas Tech. It’s a disappointment for Gasso, but in the Sooners’ first season of SEC action, Oklahoma won the conference in the regular season and hopefully set themselves up for future success.

“It’s hard to lose. This was the most enjoyable season I’ve had in a long time. Us, as coaches, really feel that everybody kind of jumped on board with us. They believed in what we were saying,” Gasso said. “They carried on the championship mindset, they grinded on the field every single day. There are some future superstars on this team and I’m really excited about that. But they had to grow through Cyd Sanders and some of these others that have been around. Ella Parker. Still going to be a young team next year. Extremely excited about it. I just don’t want to think about it right now. They’ve done some miraculous things. You witnessed one that just happened not long ago with the walk-off with two strikes and it being Abby Dayton. Their ability to believe has been unbelievable this season.”

Patty Gasso has coached at Oklahoma since 1995 and has consistently found success. Their first national championship came in 2000. Since 2011, the Sooners have failed to make the Women’s College World Series only once. They’ve won seven of the last 11 national championships as well.