OU softball notebook: Back to OKC for Sooners

It’s that time of year for OU softball. A little preview of what Sooner fans are always hoping will be to come in May and June.

OU will return to USA Softball Hall of Fame Stadium to begin its three-game set against Baylor on Friday night. Saturday and Sunday afternoon games will be at Love’s Field.

Going back to last year, OU and Texas set the record for a single-game attendance. Now nobody is really expecting that to be duplicated. But still, it is a special atmosphere.

“We want to continue to attract attendance, want to break records,” head coach Patty Gasso said. “We want other universities to try to do the same. That’s why you’ll see a lot of games on TV. Viewership has been great. If we sit back and think we’ve arrived, it’ll fall. It’ll fall away.

“So it sounds like we’re close to another sellout, and I’ll never forget that moment when we were playing Texas. It was a Friday night, the sun is setting and just all of the camera lights come out. It takes a lot to make me feel things anymore because I try to hold everything very tight, but I was in awe.”

Gasso, of course, remembers when none of this was even close to possible. A mere pipedream 20-30 years ago is now the reality.

Not just for Gasso or OU, but for her family, too. 

“Seeing JT with me as well, now I’ve got grandkids in the stands,” Gasso said. “It’s just like a wow factor for us. It’s nice for our team to play on it. They’re pretty comfortable with the stadium. I think it’s more about playing in front of that many fans. It’s something that not a lot of teams get to experience at all. So, it’s a memorable game.”

Simply put, it never gets old.

“It’s always really fun playing at the Hall of Fame Stadium,” senior Jayda Coleman said. “I think we’re actually really lucky that we get to play there before the College World Series. Just getting to feel it out, feel the field out, really get to feel the fans. There’s a lot more fans there. But yea, I’m super excited to play at Hall of Fame.” 

Baylor’s pitching will be a test

Around this time last month, you started wondering if Baylor was going to be a top-10 team when making this trip.

The Bears were brilliant at the Mary Nutter, but Big 12 has been a rough start. A 1-5 beginning, although the one win was against Oklahoma State.

The problem for Baylor is the offense. BU allowed six runs in three games at Kansas and lost all three. This is coming off a weekend where OU outscored Texas Tech 40-3.

“Pitching is very good,” Gasso said. “You can see, they’ve won some, they’ve lost some, but the scores are always very, very close. They are well-coached. I’ve been going against Glenn Moore for a long time. They are usually very aggressive runners. I haven’t seen a lot of short game yet. We haven’t really dove into them completely yet.

“They do have strong hitters that can hit the alleys but their pitching and their defense is usually very good so we’re going to have to be able to figure out their pitching staff and be able to put some runs on the board but they’re shutting a lot of teams down.”

Tech had the offense to worry about. This week, it changes to the Baylor pitching and defense and what they’ve been able to do.

Getting comfortable at Love’s

Get through that one night in OKC, then it’s back to Love’s Field for the final two games against Baylor. OU still can’t practice on Love’s Field, so that feels weird.

But the opening weekend jitters are long gone. Now? It’s time to just play your game.

“I think you saw an anomaly here when we opened up Love’s Field and we’re just kind of erasing that,” Gasso said. “We’re savoring the opening of the stadium, we are erasing what happened in the stadium, because none of us — I couldn’t prepare them for what it was going to feel like, nor could I prepare myself, so we have rebounded from that, we’ve reset ourselves and I think you can all see that.”

OU 12, UT-Arlington 1 (5) (Wednesday)

A 10-run second inning put this one away early. Alynah Torres hit two two-run home runs in the bottom of the second. OU scored eight of its 10 runs with two outs.

The big blast, after all, was a grand slam by Alyssa Brito. Karlie Keeney earned the win in the circle, to move to 3-1 this season.