The No. 1 Sooners hit six home runs and Jordy Bahl continued to dazzle in Oklahoma’s 9-1 win over the No. 8 ranked Kentucky Wildcats.
After a stellar weekend that saw them outscore their opponents 64-2 in a five-game sweep at the Hall of Fame Classic, the Sooners continued their winning ways with a 9-1 win over the No. 8 Kentucky Wildcats on Tuesday evening.
Three Sooners hit multiple home runs and Jordy Bahl pitched her sixth complete game and the Sooners won by run-rule victory for the 22nd time this season. Jocelyn Alo, Lynnsie Elam, and Alyssa Brito each homered twice for the 26-0 Oklahoma Sooners.
Alo got the scoring started off for the Sooners in the top of a first for a solo shot, the 101st of her career. Lynnsie Elam, who was named the Big 12 Player of the Week on Tuesday continued her hot run with a solo home run in the second to extend the lead to 2-0.
Elam has six home runs and 16 RBIs for an Oklahoma Sooners lineup that continues to get hitting from every spot in the lineup.
The Sooners added four runs in the third inning to make the score 6-0 and with Bahl able to work around several jams on the evening, cruised to victory yet again. Bahl struck out 12 Wildcats hitters and allowed just five hits and one earned run in a pivotal win.
The Sooners kick off Big 12 play with a three-game series against the Baylor Bears on Friday in Norman before hosting Wichita State next Tuesday night.
Contact/Follow us @SoonersWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Oklahoma news, notes, and opinions. Let us know your thoughts, comment on this story below. Join the conversation today.
The Oklahoma Sooners improved to 12-0 on the season with a win over Long Beach State led by Kinzie Hansen, Grace Lyons, and Alyssa Brito.
The No. 1 ranked Oklahoma Sooners improved to 12-0 on the season with an 11-3 run rule win over Long Beach State on day one of the Mary Nutter Classic in California.
After Jordy Bahl’s perfect game in a 10-0 win against Cal-State Fullerton, the Sooners got a bit more of a challenge from Long Beach State who notched the first earned run of the season off of a Sooners pitcher in the three-run third inning.
Hope Trautwein hadn’t allowed an earned run coming into the game got into some trouble in the bottom third inning allowing three runs (two unearned) cutting the Sooners lead to 6-3. Nicole May entered the game to get the Sooners out of a jam and pitched 2.1 scoreless innings, allowing two hits to close out the game.
Oklahoma responded in the top of the fourth thanks to Alyssa Brito’s base-clearing triple that drove in three runs to make it 9-3. They added another one later in the inning to go into the bottom of the fourth up 10-3. Oklahoma would add another run in the top of the fifth and May finished it off in the bottom of the fifth for the Sooners run-rule win.
At the plate, Kinzie Hansen and Grace Lyons hit home runs as the Sooners continued their offensive tear to start the season.
The Oklahoma Sooners will play two games on Saturday, first against No. 8/10 Arizona at 12 p.m. CT and then No. 17/17 Tennessee at 2:30 p.m. CT. They’ll close out the weekend series at 11 a.m. on against Utah on Sunday.
Contact/Follow us @SoonersWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Oklahoma news, notes, and opinions. Let us know your thoughts, comment on this story below. Join the conversation today.
Oregon might have a problem that needs to be fixed with softball players entering and then leaving Melyssa Lombardi’s softball program.
It may be nothing. Really, it could be just nothing.
College athletes come and go these days via the transfer portal. It happens every year to every single school in every single sport. The NCAA has made it extremely easy for student-athletes to change schools since they don’t have to sit out a year after transferring. Kids are even switching schools within the same conference, something that was rarely done just five years ago.
It is especially prevalent when a new coach comes to town.
But then again, for the Oregon Ducks softball team, it may be something. And if it is something, Oregon and its athletic director Rob Mullens have a problem.
That problem is players entering Melyssa Lombardi’s softball program and then almost immediately as soon as they can, they leave her softball program.
The departure of all-Pac-12 selection Alyssa Brito, Mya Felder, and Jazzy Contreras brought back bad memories of the mass exodus of players when Lombardi was hired in 2018. But those players stayed, saw her off-season program, and then decided to bolt.
Most of those players, such as Lauren Burke, Maggie Balint, Miranda Elish, and a whole host of others that decided Oregon and Lombardi’s way of doing things just wasn’t for them. It got so bad that the Ducks were calling for open tryouts on campus just to fill out a 2019 roster.
Kelvin Kuo-USA TODAY Sports
Some of those players who left went to Texas to play for their coach Mike White. That’s understandable and it happens all the time. But Brito, Felder, and Contreras didn’t play for White.
Contreras hardly played in her two years in Eugene, so her leaving wasn’t exactly a surprise. She wants more playing time and hopefully, she finds that elsewhere. But Brito and Felder are curious cases.
Felder was one of the Ducks’ best hitters in 2020 as she hit .356 in Oregon’s 22 games that were played before the pandemic. In 2021, it seemed like she continued where she left off, batting nearly .400 through March. But then Felder was plagued with a two-month slump that not only saw her average dip to .274, but her place in the order went down and most likely her confidence.
It’s unusual for a hitter that good go through a slump for that long. It begs the question of whether something was going on behind the scenes. If she was injured, Felder likely wouldn’t have been out there.
As for Brito, there was no slump. Actually quite the opposite. She played outstanding the entire season both in the batter’s box and in the field at shortstop. She hit .299 with 10 homers and drove in 31 runs. Everything was going her way.
But her announcement to transfer came just days after the season ended. Although it’s easier and common, players don’t take this particular decision lightly, so it’s very possible that when Brito was playing in the Austin Regional, she knew her playing days as a Duck was nearly over.
For Oregon and Lombardi’s sake, hopefully, it’s just these three that have decided to leave. The off-season isn’t even a week old, so odds are, there will be more players exiting Eugene.
The third-year coach has proven she can bring in the talent. But can she keep it? If not, Mullens has to address whatever issue that lies beneath and fixes it now.
It’s that time of year that every college sport dreads these days. It seems like right after a season ends, players decide to use the transfer portal to get out of dodge.
This time it’s Oregon softball’s turn to feel its effects with the big loss being shortstop Alyssa Brito seeking greener pastures elsewhere. Along with the all-Pac-12 selection, infielders Mya Felder and Jazzy Contreras have put in their transfer papers as well.
Losing Brito is going to hurt the Ducks. It’s hard to find a shortstop that can both be a slick fielder and hit as she can. Brito was one of the top prep players in the country when she signed with Oregon and in her one and only season as a Duck, she didn’t disappoint.
She finished the season with a .299 average with 10 home runs and 31 runs batted in. In the Austin Regional, Brito went 4-for-14. But her play at shortstop was something to behold as she made several key plays to either end innings or to stop potential scoring threats.
Felder was a key component for the 2020 Ducks that went 22-2 before the pandemic forced a shutdown of the season. The sophomore from Fresno, Calif. hit .356 with two homers and 10 RBIs for that first season and Felder got off to a hot start in 2021 before her bat went ice cold.
The designated player was hitting .390 through the month of March and then once the conference season got rolling, Felder’s bat didn’t. Her spot in the batting order kept dropping and eventually she finished this season with a .274 batting average with five home runs and 21 RBI.
Contreras just played in two games this season and 13 games overall in her two seasons for the Ducks where got received one at-bat.
Whether Oregon Ducks softball head coach Melyssa Lombardi can replace talents such as Brito and Felder remains to be seen, but it won’t be easy.
Oregon softball ends its two-year hiatus from the NCAA tournament, but in a surprising move, Eugene wasn’t selected as a Regional.
It’s been several years, but the Oregon Ducks softball team is back in the NCAA tournament. Unfortunately, in a surprising turn of events, the Ducks will not host a Regional despite a 37-15 overall record and finishing third in the Pac-12.
Instead, a date with former coach Mike White is on the horizon as Oregon will travel to No. 12 overall seed Texas and play in the Austin Regional alongside Texas State, Saint Francis (PA), and the host Longhorns.
The Ducks open up with Texas State Friday, May 21 at 4:30 p.m. and will be streamed on ESPN3. The Bobcats finished the regular season with a 38-12 overall record. Saint Francis, who comes into Austin with a 40-8 mark, will take on the 39-11 Longhorns to open up the double-elimination Regional at 3 p.m. PST.
The various NCAA committees have had a history of setting up matchups that might be intriguing to fans as well as the media and have passed them off as coincidence. But pitting the Ducks against the coach that put the program on the map isn’t a coincidence.
White left the Ducks for Texas after taking Oregon to the 2018 Women’s College Series. In White’s last season, the Ducks went 53-10. When he left, the Ducks hired Melyssa Lombardi and after a mass defection of players, it took her just one full season and part of 2020 to get the back to prominence with an NCAA tourney birth.
In order to set up this “coincidence,” Eugene was passed over as a Regional site. Texas hosting a Regional isn’t a surprise. Oregon not hosting certainly is. If Oregon should get out of Austin as the winners, the Ducks will most likely travel to Tuscaloosa to face the No. 4 overall seed barring a giant upset.
According to the NCAA RPI rankings, the main formula the committee usually looks at when determines sites, the Ducks were No. 15. But Oregon was passed over for the likes of Duke, Kentucky, Arizona State, and Washington.
The Ducks had a better conference record than Arizona, ASU, and Washington, and Oregon has a better RPI ranking than Regional hosts Washington (16) and Kentucky (18). But for whatever reason, Jane Sanders Stadium was passed over.
UCLA, the defending national champions, is the No. 2 overall seed with its 41-4 record with two of those four losses coming to Oregon. The Pac-12 received six bids with Stanford also getting an at-large.
It wasn’t all disappointing news for Ducks, however. The Pac-12 announced its annual awards and Oregon was properly represented. Allee Bunker, Haley Cruse, and pitcher Brooke Yanez were all First-Team conference selections. Alyssa Brito and Terra McGowan were on the Second Team with Hannah Delgado on the Third Team.
Brito and Bunker were on the All-Defensive squad with Brito and Delgado on the All-Freshmen team.
