Patty Gasso revealed what changed during pivotal fourth inning in WCWS Game 1 vs. FSU

Oklahoma is now up 1-0 in the championship series at the Women’s College World Series and are circling those Sooner wagons with a third straight national title within arm’s reach — just one win away. Despite the 5-0 final tally that suggests OU dominated Game 1 from start to finish against Florida State, head coach Patty Gasso wasn’t totally satisfied with her team’s outing. In the postgame, she said the girls had to take a break and refocus midway through while also crediting a few particular plays for re-energizing the team.

“I think we went kind of back in the tunnel and we just talked about: What are we doing? Who are we right now? This is not how we play the game.

“I think the moment got big. For the first time in a long time, they started thinking…what is happening right now? Mistakes, which we don’t do, we don’t do that. You could see by the way they were swinging or they were frozen that they weren’t ready for it. They were off. We just really talked about what’s going on. Let’s reset. We stopped and we reset.”

Shortly after the reset, Sooner hitter Haley Lee came out and claimed to have been hit by a pitch and won her free base upon review. That moment was huge, according to Gasso.

“Haley Lee getting hit, them telling me bit, any time they say something happened, I believe them. I’m always going to challenge it ’cause I don’t think they’ll lie to me (smiling). They probably have, but has nothing to do with softball. I had to listen. That was big. That was big when we got that overturned.”

After Lee was hit, pitcher Jordy Bahl subbed in to pinch run and scored off a double from the very next batter, Kenzie Hansen.

“Then the momentum of bringing in Jordy. We needed a spark. We needed some kind of spark,” said Gasso. “I think when Jordy comes in to run, our team gets kind of amped. From that point on, everything just started, we started finding some gaps, get a little more confidence in what we were doing.”

Another consequential play in Gasso’s mind was when Jayda Coleman threw out a Seminole base runner at second base from the outfield. On a day when Bahl was dominating every facet of the Sooner defense, it was good to see another OU fielder make a big play.

“Just because I’m thinking about it, one of the biggest plays I felt of the game was Jayda Coleman getting that ball in from centerfield to throw them out at second. That was huge. We just needed momentum. We needed to continue to create momentum because Jordy was the only one doing it at that time. I was really proud of them just really turning things around very quickly and responding to the words we were talking about.“