In the Women's CWS, no close games in round one.

[Plainosooner]

No run rules, but all of the games were decided by five or six runs.

Florida, LSU, UCLA and Michigan beat UTenn, Auburn, Oregon and Alabama. Bama was shut out. The lower seeds to win were UCLA and LSU, who beat teams from their own conference that they finished behind in the regular season. Lower seeds might fare better when they don't have to play on the road.

Winners' bracket games are today. UCLA win over Oregon didn't finish until after midnight.

 

[Soonersincefitty]

Tell us Plaino, as you see this playing out, can you in hindsight see an easier route that OUr girls might have taken had they been seeded more fairly as has been alluded to earlier?

 

[Plainosooner]

It's a crap shoot about the seeding and how that creates matchups.

I don't think Alabama is that good, but they are tough to beat at their place. It also matters who gets hot, when.

I'd love to have seen OU get to the WCWS. But all the flaws that I talked about a month ago, here and on the premium board (and got beat up some) proved to be true. In a game, where stuff happens, and you have to overcome tough breaks, because they are going to come, OU had little margin for error. All the teams in the winner's bracket in OKC have pitching depth. And OU had none.

And it's funny, I saw a link to a good interview that I think James Hale did with Patti shortly after the Bama loss, and the things I talked about as being a problem, were the exact things that Patti pointed out. She is very encouraged by the group that will be next year's freshman. And she thinks they need a staff and the new pitchers will give them that.

I think that if Page had had somebody to pitch game two of the three game series in the conference, that she might have been stronger at the end of the year. And if somebody else had pitched game two in Tuscaloosa, I'm not sure that Bama would have scored on her at all in game three. But I also totally understand why Patti had to put her out there. OU's second pitcher wouldn't have been as good as Bama's. She needed to make their number one pitch every possible inning in game two. They really didn't start to hit her effectively until the middle of game three.

I'm watching UCLA, which led Michigan early 3-0 and now trails 10-4. I thought both UCLA and Michigan were overrated. Michigan lost a conference home game to Iowa, for crying out loud and OU just dominated Iowa when they came to Norman. But Michigan also had better early wins than OU did, despite playing softball in the worst of the five "power conferences."

Michigan's starter last night shut out Bama. Tonight, she didn't get out of the first inning against UCLA. But their number two has given up one run since and their offense is rolling and it's not just their top two hitters who are doing it. Their sub lefty is getting pitches four inches off the plate outside called a strike and they's helped her.

Florida looks to me like the most complete team. Their senior pitcher has filled a role very much like Keilani did for at least her last two years at OU. She has one loss all year and has hit some crucial home runs in the post season.

Patti also talked about the lack of speed and slap hitters that allow you to be more aggressive offensively. She said that she didn't like running as much this because they didn't want to give up a run if somebody hit a home run.

To be honest, I don't like the approach that OU teaches their non slappers. That wide, low batting stance can work against lesser pitching, or if you have rare talent, but if you do that while crowding the plate, it makes you really vulnerable to the good pitcher throwing it hard under your hands. That sets up the rise and the soft stuff outside, and I think is responsible for all the pop ups. This broadcast crew (major SEC homers, even though one played at OSU) dissected Bama's loss last night talking about Bama's eight fly/pop outs last night on top of six strikeouts and you can't have so many easy outs. They also did OU's regional last weekend and OU was worse than that against Bama. Made the exact points I made about OUr team last weekend.

Balls in the air don't take bad hops. And I think OU's approach this year made them unable to get after good pitching. I don't think it's a coincidence that Callie Parsons, who's barely played her senior year, got the first hit for OU in game one and game two, despite not hitting til the sixth in game one and batting ninth in game two.

Bama's pitcher wasn't that good. But OU made her look like the softball version of Cy Young. She got hit pretty good last night. Might have something to do with all the pitches she threw last weekend. Bama is the only team in OKC who made it relying pretty much on one starter. And that stuff adds up.

This OU team would have needed a lot of breaks to get very far this weekend. But I loved how Chamberlain got her power game going against Bama. And I ache for Pendley and her ankle injury and playing so beautifully at short. But the tweak hurt her stroke a lot, I believe, and OU missed her. She was the best hitter coming into the series and she wasn't herself.

I watched Bama's outfielders shy away from the wall chasing flies last night. Their center field made a game changing catch because she was familiar with the field last week. I think OU would beat Bama on a neutral field. I wish that they'd have had the chance.

Patti said that the environment they played in at Tuscaloosa last weekend was the toughest she's seen in 20 plus years at OU. I think OU might have won at Michigan or UCLA, even though both teams won their first game last night.

Michigan and Florida are the two 2-0 teams. I think Florida is better, but Michigan might be hotter. It will be interesting to see how the Wolverines look if another SEC teams makes it out of the right side losers' bracket. They sure handled Bama. And they routed UCLA 10-4 just ended. The Sooners lack of pitching depth would have been unlikely to survive in OKC. But I'd loved to have seen them have a shot to try it.

 

[mcbrider]

Wow Plainosooner, I did not realize that you were a softball hitting instructor in your spare time. So OU's low wide stance is the reason for their poor hitting this year against top pitching. This approach only works against lesser pitching. Very interesting observation. Have you gotten in touch with Tripp MacKay to point out to him the errors of hitting instruction. If only you had been coaching OU's hitters. You do know that OU has used this approach for many years. When Lauren Chamberlain came in as a freshman she had a long swing and was striking out quite a bit. Coach MacKay had her shorten her wing with a wider base - more compact and the rest is history. The approach that OU uses now is same they used in 2013 when they won the national championship. Here is a thought for you. Because of the crummy conference they play in and the weak non conference schedule (not OU's fault), excluding the West Coast trips, they did not face very many quality pitchers. Therefore, they struggled against top notch pitching. After Heather Stearns of Baylor run ruled OU, one of OU's players talked about how long it had been since they had seen an elite pitcher. I also have a baseball background, Plaino. Little League, Pony League, Babe Ruth League, four years high school, and four years of small college baseball. I also have been a head high school baseball coach and an assistant softball coach on a high school team that played for a state championship. But I would never criticize one of the best hitting coaches in college softball unless I was certain that I knew more than he did about softball hitting mechanics. If not the low wide stance, what stance should they have used? And whatever stance you recommend for the sooner hitters, do you have any concrete evidence that it allows players to better hit the rise ball and handle the slow stuff outside.
.

 

[sybarite]

In the last four games of the year, Paige allowed 0, 2, 2, and 5 runs. Of those five runs, four were on a grand slam hit by a batter that Paige had handled all weekend, and who was actually pinch hit for in game two because she couldn't hit Paige. She had also struck out to end the game with the bases loaded in the first game. There is such a thing as luck. I also hear that she didn't get a hit in the first two Bama games in the CWS., being one for 19 in her recent efforts prior to their elimination game in which she did finally get two hits. This wasn't all about Paige being tired. It was pure luck, a little luck also loading the bases when a strike three call was awarded a walk.

It didn't help that OU did absolutely nothing in game two. Paige allows two runs and loses? How many times did we leave the bases loaded without scoring in the regionals and Super-Regionals. Bad time for Shelby to go into a slump. But, she had somewhat of a slump during the NCAAs. We had five of our eight runs score on Lauren't home runs. We had two score on a Self home run. We had one run in the Super-Regionals that wasn't due to a home run by Lauren or Kady? About the only thing that I have ever agreed with Murphy about is that it is about getting the big hit. They did. We didn't. I look to a lineup that didn't even get the ball out of the infield most of the series.

It helps to have two pitchers. The fact is that the only team in the CWS that has two is Florida, and Florida needs two because they are probably the weakest hitting team in the CWS. They have difficulty scoring runs against good teams. They owe some wins to some lousy defenses that let Florida win. Nobody else really has a second pitcher good enough to win a game in the CWS.

I guess that we'll probably write Kelsey off. But, Finney is likely to be that pitcher along with Paige next year.

I won't make a comment about hitting stances. 1. I never tried hitting out of a stance like that. I had better plate coverage if I strode into the ball letting me adjust to inside and outside pitches. 2. I never saw the day I could take off running for first base and hit a pitch on the way. It's a different game than I played. They are pretty good.

We simply didn't have a hitter who could slap and make it to first like Turang. we tried with Arnold for half the season. Didn't have the speed. We didn't steal effectively. Inadequate speed. There are two things I don't like: giving up runners and strikeouts. I'd probably bench someone for swinging at a rise ball until they learn not to. Even if you hit it, it kind of goes to the wrong place, up.

 

[Plainosooner]

Not because she was tired, huh?

Sybarite, you told us after game one, that OU would breeze because they'd figured out the rise ball. That wasn't true.

You told us that what I posted about OU playing themselves out of hosting the Supers wasn't true, because we were too highly ranked. That wasn't true.

You told us that one pitcher was all that was necessary. Yet every team that made the WCWS semi's had used a staff. Nobody rode one pitcher for three games. Even Bama, who only got four or five outs against us in the Supers from their non starter, used a different starter in game three and used her past the time she was effective.

You have made a half dozen false statements from an overly optimistic point of view in the last six weeks about OU softball. Now you're claiming that the grand slam was lucky. It was pretty obvious that in the sixth inning of game three, that Parker's effectiveness was diminishing, but we had no one else to go to. It is why we got beat.

 

[Plainosooner]

Wow Plainosooner, I did not realize that you were a softball hitting instructor in your spare time. So OU's low wide stance is the reason for their poor hitting this year against top pitching. This approach only works against lesser pitching. Very interesting observation. Have you gotten in touch with Tripp MacKay to point out to him the errors of hitting instruction. If only you had been coaching OU's hitters. You do know that OU has used this approach for many years. When Lauren Chamberlain came in as a freshman she had a long swing and was striking out quite a bit. Coach MacKay had her shorten her wing with a wider base - more compact and the rest is history. The approach that OU uses now is same they used in 2013 when they won the national championship. Here is a thought for you. Because of the crummy conference they play in and the weak non conference schedule (not OU's fault), excluding the West Coast trips, they did not face very many quality pitchers. Therefore, they struggled against top notch pitching. After Heather Stearns of Baylor run ruled OU, one of OU's players talked about how long it had been since they had seen an elite pitcher. I also have a baseball background, Plaino. Little League, Pony League, Babe Ruth League, four years high school, and four years of small college baseball. I also have been a head high school baseball coach and an assistant softball coach on a high school team that played for a state championship. But I would never criticize one of the best hitting coaches in college softball unless I was certain that I knew more than he did about softball hitting mechanics. If not the low wide stance, what stance should they have used? And whatever stance you recommend for the sooner hitters, do you have any concrete evidence that it allows players to better hit the rise ball and handle the slow stuff outside.
.

Mcbrider, I've coached over 80 seasons of one sport or another. Included in that was double digits of softball and double digits of baseball. I've never coached women in either, but the mechanics of hitting are pretty similar in both. I'm surely not claiming to know as much about teaching women to hit as OU's excellent hitting coach. But I believe there are weaknesses in the method, though I also understand the strengths of the low wide stance. It keeps your head in the same place and minimizes body movement, allowing the hitter to get the barrel to the same place routinely. As you mentioned about Chamberlain, it helped shorten her swing. Had she stayed healthy, she'd likely be sitting on 110 homers rather than 95. She is also the lady that Patti called the best hitter she'd ever seen.

If you go back and look at the video of game three, when she homered twice, she backed off the plate just a little and opened up her stance just slightly. I thought it was a great adjustment. I believe what I wrote was that I think that the low wide stance caused a hole in plate coverage IF you crowd the plate, which most of our righties were doing. Chamberlain adjusted and had some success.

I agree that not seeing great pitching much during the year was a big factor. It just sucks that last year, that just as Self was becoming the hottest hitter on the team, that she tore up her knee and this year both Casey and Parsons got hurt early. And then the crucial injury: Pendley's ankle the night before the start of the Supers. She was classy and brilliant at short. But I do think it impacted her swing, just enough to make a difference. Casey never hit against Bama, with low and wide, because she stayed on the plate the whole series. And it's not like she hadn't faced top pitchers before.

I'm no hitting coach. On my teams, and I've won a few titles as a coach too, though nothing close to what OU has accomplished, I usually have an assistant teach hitting. My forte is defense, base running and fundamentals of the game in all areas, especially the little things like the short throws in turning double plays, and footwork details. But I also understand hitting fundamentals pretty well.

And I find it interesting that so many of OUr righties use that low and wide philosophy. I personally think that it makes it easier to pitch to the lineup when they all have that in common.

Of course, it didn't help that so many of the crucial called pitches in the three games seemed to go Bama's way, especially the ridiculously bad call on the 2-0 pitch to Lauren, the led to her unfairly having to expand her strike zone, with the bases loaded. A lot of tough breaks in Tuscaloosa. But we didn't put enough pressure on them, with too many K's and too many pop ups.

Maybe you can tell us how that came to be.

 

[sybarite]

Plaino, you are as wrong about this as you are about most things involving women's sports.
1. They did adjust and made good contact the third time they faced Osorio. That should have carried over. It didn't. If you noticed, Gasso was as frustrated as anyone over their regression. It was like everyone wanted to be the one to hit it out rather than meet the ball. Cassie came in and met the ball, getting two hits.
2. Since the rpi was totally absurd, it should have been basically ignored, just as it has been in the past. Someone had the influence to use it---the money of the SEC? If you noticed, Basso was just as outraged as I was at the nonsense of their seeding, and even the ESPN commentators indicated that the OU was seeded too low. Unless you want to claim inside information about the influence of the SEC, you look at this as a error in judgement. You might notice how quickly some of the higher seeded teams from the west coast disappeared, as well as how the SEC only beat KU and OU because of location.
3. One pitcher is all that is absolutely necessary. Since OU's hitters forced extra innings by their lack of production, it stretched Paige's innings. But, even at that, Paige was beaten by one pitch to a player that she had struck out about six times in the series. One hit in about six games, and you think it was because she was tired.

 

[K2C Sooner]

Plaino, you are as wrong about this as you are about most things involving women's sports.
1. They did adjust and made good contact the third time they faced Osorio. That should have carried over. It didn't. If you noticed, Gasso was as frustrated as anyone over their regression. It was like everyone wanted to be the one to hit it out rather than meet the ball. Cassie came in and met the ball, getting two hits.
2. Since the rpi was totally absurd, it should have been basically ignored, just as it has been in the past. Someone had the influence to use it---the money of the SEC? If you noticed, Basso was just as outraged as I was at the nonsense of their seeding, and even the ESPN commentators indicated that the OU was seeded too low. Unless you want to claim inside information about the influence of the SEC, you look at this as a error in judgement. You might notice how quickly some of the higher seeded teams from the west coast disappeared, as well as how the SEC only beat KU and OU because of location.
3. One pitcher is all that is absolutely necessary. Since OU's hitters forced extra innings by their lack of production, it stretched Paige's innings. But, even at that, Paige was beaten by one pitch to a player that she had struck out about six times in the series. One hit in about six games, and you think it was because she was tired.

This is getting intense........................

 

[Soonersincefitty]

Oh yeah, this is good.

It's like we're watching Stephan Hawking debating Albert Einstein...college softball wise...

 

[sybarite]

Since I got a long-distance phone call, I didn't finish my remarks, or, at least stopped in the middle.

Plaino, your negativity towards women's sports makes me wonder why you even follow them. The fact that the women's team has been to three straight World Series, being in the finals twice, doesn't seem to impress you. The fact that Patti Gasso has won two national titles doesn't seem to impress you. She knows softball, and she had a good team again this year, a team that did underachieve due to some untimely lack of productivity, not pitching.

You didn't even notice that around the country, pitchers were allowing ten and eleven runs in Super-Regional games. Our pitching was not the problem.

You tend to be the same way about Sherri Coale, always finding that the women's team is lacking somehow. Well, let's make one thing very clear. Sherri Coale has been to as many Final Fours in the past fourteen years as the men's basketball team has in the past hundred years. She knows what she is doing.

I am quite positive when it comes to women's basketball and softball. Frankly, they have been more successful than any program at OU other than Men's Gymnastics, and I put Williams, Gasso, and Coale at the top of the list for OU coaches. I am positive because they have earned it.

I've played a lot of baseball and softball. But, these girls do things I never saw before. They are good enough to hit while running. The speed with which they play the game is greater than that of baseball. One slight bobble, and there will be no out. They are good. I would have started Arnold at third base for any men's team I ever played for whether she could hit or not. She is the best I've seen at covering that position. Reflexes.

Go be negative about something that you actually care about and follow.

 

[Plainosooner]

Sybarite, I'm not sure which is worse. Your analysis or your memory. There were no extra inning games in the Supers. And your view that the 314th pitch in 26 hours having no impact on a slight loss of precision due to a little fatigue, shows that you know very little about baseball or softball.

You don't get a grand slam home run from luck. Luck didn't load the bases and make her throw a more hittable pitch. And it was only the sixth. She didn't have to pitch the seventh, thankfully. She'd never pitched ten innings in one day, much less 13. Especially on the heels of 122 pitches the night before in game one.

There is a narrow difference between top performance and being hit, when the other team is a top team.

I didn't love the seeding. But RPI has merit, which you discount because it didn't go your way. OUr way. But OU had no wins against the top ten. The entire conference had two. It was just the breaks of the game that OU played the best team on their schedule at their place and played poorly. But LSU had something to do with that and that was part of the reason for the seeding. As it turns out, the Pac 12 teams were more than a little overrated. And Baylor had beaten Oregon once and UT had beaten UCLA once, but UT didn't beat the Bruins' best pitcher. I also thought Michigan was overrated, but they did make the finals. I suspect Florida will sweep them.

More pitching depth. What is interesting about your accusations of my complaints, is that on the site last week, somebody, either here or on the premium board posted an interview on OKC radio with Patti, and she said pretty much the exact same thing I did. She said that this team didn't have the speed necessary to win a national title. They couldn't play aggressively to pressure the defense. And she also pointed out that the teams at the WCWS all had staffs and that's what she hopes they'll have next season. So I believe Patti would tell you that you do need more than one these days.

It's not a coincidence that her last NC came because even though she had the country's best pitcher, she threw her number two in the Saturday games in the conference and in the second game of the national finals. So she understands the value of a staff in this day and age of college softball. This isn't like the days when they had to put a runner at second base in extra innings to break 0-0 ties. It's not just that the pitchers are farther back than they used to be. Those that run the sport have recognized that it's a better game when it's a team game, and more than just the pitcher matters. Strike zones are smaller than they used to be. The rise balls at the collar bone used to be consistently called strikes. The ball at the shoulders in the edge of the batters box, outside or inside used to be a strike. Now, it is only rarely. And a lot of pitches two inches above the belly button are now frequently called a ball. It's good for the game. But it does mean that hitters can work the pitcher in the way they couldn't before.

I love Patti Gasso and I love Sherri Coale. I don't just love that they're great coaches. I love their overall leadership. I love it when OUr girls in both sports circle up after their games and pray together. And I think girls come to OU in both sports because they see value in that. And in the long run, I suspect it's a part of why Sherri graduates almost all of her players. I don't know about the grad rates for softball, but I suspect they're pretty good too.

But I bristle when somebody says that they are better coaches than the best paid coach on campus. And the points I've made over that last two months is that if you're going to make claims like that, as you seem to be, then you need to look at things objectively. That would mean that the mistakes of both ought to be considered as honestly as Bob's perceived mistakes are.

So if you haven't recruited a top high school pitcher in six or seven years, you shouldn't get a pass on that, any more than Bob should if he had the same issue with quarterbacks.

Your tendency is to blame anybody else. Unfair RPI, or whatever. I know this. In the Supers, Chamberlain and Parsons combined to go 5 for 16. The rest of the team was 5 for 53 which is an .094 batting average and after the first game nobody else, except for Miller had a hit. This after you promised that they had it figured out. Obviously, that wasn't true.

 

[trademarcs]

Where's the popcorn eating emote?

 

[Section22Sooner]

Since I got a long-distance phone call....

Now there's something I haven't heard in a coon's age, I mean.. in a long time.

 

[sybarite]

Fact: I didn't say there was an extra-inning game.
Fact: Gasso said she was frustrated that the team went back to swinging at rise balls in the second game after they had finally laid off of them the third time through the lineup in the first game and were meeting the ball. That's why SHE THOUGHT (those ideas weren't exclusively mine) THAT THEY HAD FIGURED IT OUT. Got it? She also indicated that the officiating behind the plate didn't help by raising the strike zone in the second game to call the rise ball a strike, but took away Paige's curve drop.
Fact: you never explained how the rpi----you know that all-knowing piece of crap that seemed to favor any school that played its preseason in the southeast---had Kansas ranked ahead of Baylor and Texas when both had swept Kansas IN LAWRENCE. The rpi was so absurdly misrepresentative of anything that it should have been given minimal weight. The ONLY thing it seemed to say was that there was an advantage to playing preseason games in Florida, no matter who you played. Look at Kansas' schedule and explain their high rpi that exceeded OU for much of the season. Where did they finish---fifth out of seven teams?
Fact: Runyon's prior at bats in the Super-Regionals:
Game One: first---grounder to first
third---pop out to second
fifth----fouled out to first
seventh----struck out with the bases loaded to end the first game
Game two: first----pop out to second
third---pop out to second
sixth---fouled out to third
Game three: third----pop out to short
fifth----ALABAMA pinch hit for Runyon who had been zero for eight in the Supers and hadn't got the ball out of the infield.
sixth---home run

Until the third game of the CWS, this was the only ball Runyon had hit out of the infield in two weeks.

LUCK. She hadn't even touched Paige until that one pitch. LUCK. Paige had been in exactly the same position in the first game against Runyon and struck her out.

 

[Soonersincefitty]

Well, just for 22s reference, and I have no idea how it is so seemingly random and capricious, but a 'coons age' is around 8 and a half years. FYI.

 

[sybarite]

Now, with respect to Patti Gasso not having recruited a pitcher in six years----you mean like Leslie Miller, Taylor Dewberry, Ham, or a rather high-profile pitching recruit who was the top pitcher for the emerging Australian national team--some kid named Casey. It turned out that they were busts as pitchers. That happens. I can remember some other superstar pitching recruits that simply didn't work out at the D-1 level. You can't get a superstar every year, although it appears that Gasso has done exactly that from 2015--2018.

Exactly how necessary is it to have more than one pitcher? Bama had several, but none that they would actually put in the game with the game on the one. They used one reserve pitcher for one inning, and it was because Murphy didn't want his pitcher facing Lauren again, already having given up two home runs to her. So, his reserve gives up a home run, pitches one inning, and goes back to the bench. Bama had one pitcher that they trusted.

When push came to shove, LSU had one pitcher that they trusted in a key game---Hoover. They trusted their other pitchers no more than we trusted Stevens, and Stevens had pitched us to the CWS last year. Florida has more tha one pitcher that can pitch in a key game. But, nobody has a Ricketts/Gascoigne combination. We would have loved it had Stevens just been almost as good as last year.