Sometimes, the bats go cold. it doesn’t happen too often for the Oklahoma Sooners softball program, a team that has set the standard for offense.
The Texas Longhorns went through the Red River Rivalry series in Austin with a good game plan and kept the Sooners from making good contact during the three-game series.
In particular, the Longhorns were able to keep the Sooners from getting their power stroke from being a significant part of the series. The Sooners had just two home runs and five total extra-base hits, or 1.67 per game, during the three games in Austin.
The Sooners entered the series averaging nearly five extra-base hits a game. Texas didn’t let Oklahoma hit many hard balls, and when they did, those line drives got caught in the infield and led to double plays.
The Sooners didn’t catch any breaks in the final two games. Combine that with their relative power outage and it had all the makings of a historic series loss. Historic in the sense that it hadn’t happened in Big 12 play in 13 years and hadn’t happened to the Longhorns in 15.
Streaks are meant to be broken. Oklahoma’s broken a lot of them. They’ve set the standard for excellence over the last decade. The series loss to Texas is a setback, but the three-time defending national champions have shown a resilient spirit and are still in position to make a run at a historic fourth-straight national title.
But it’s one game and one series at a time for the Sooners. This is still a lineup that is the best in the nation with several national player of the year candidates capable of changing a game and a series with one swing of a bat. This is still a team capable of hitting through the order in a given inning regardless of the opponent.
There’s a reason they’ve been so successful and over the remainder of the season, the Oklahoma Sooners are going to remind us why.
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