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Best of Oklahoma softball head coach Patty Gasso: OU regional weekend

Bob Przybyloby:Bob Przybylo•05/18/23•

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Patty Gasso
Brian Bahr / Contributor PhotoG/Getty

Postseason play has officially arrived for Oklahoma softball. The No. 1-ranked Sooners (51-1 overall) will host a four-team regional this weekend at Marita Hynes Field.

Head coach Patty Gasso spent 15 minutes Wednesday evening previewing the weekend and what’s to come for OU the rest of the way.

Jordy Bahl’s sophomore season?

She’s had a different kind of freedom. The injury was really devastating for her. Her whole life she’s been waiting for that big moment. She wasn’t present. It hurt. We wanted to show it’s out of your control, and we just kind of played free and tried to do it for her. I think one of the best moments of the season was seeing her, although she was maybe 40 percent pitching in the national championship game.

And that was one, to reward her if she wanted it and two, give her the experience. So now I just feel like she’s over that, she’s free and she’s enjoying it and she’s helping us in other ways. She was running bases in the Big 12 Championship game really well, had a hit, had a hit-and-run on, she executed it really well. So she’s just a lot more mature and a lot more relaxed.

Haley Lee’s resurgence at Big 12 tournament for OU?

I feel l that when you’re in a slump, you just try to swing harder. That’s really – you want to do the opposite. She’s swinging at 100 percent and that’s not going to work because your body gets offset. Your eyes get offset. The conversation was more about just go at 20 percent and see what happens. Twenty percent is still like 80 percent. We needed her to stop taking such massive – when she swings and misses, there are sounds that go throughout the fanbase – so it was just getting too big. It was just trying to get her to slow it down a bit and be under more control.

Home Run Village is back at OU this weekend (the extra seating), do those jam-packed environments ever get old?

I just remember coaches who have been here that have lost to us in a regional or super regional have said out loud, ‘That’s the hardest place to play.’ It’s very hard to play in that stadium and feel like you can gain momentum. So that’s really the fans and the fact that fans are sitting low and they’re on you. When we go to facilities where the stadium’s up high, you just don’t feel it the same way, but you can hear everything. Sometimes I don’t want you to hear. And sometimes we don’t want to hear it because it’s against us at times. But you can hear every sound and you can feel everything. So there is a great advantage. I think home field advantage with our fans and how they come out and the way they go after it.

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