Now that basketball is over, we can move on to spring events. In addition to a basketball hiring blitz with total uncertainty about who will be hired for both the men’s and women’s BB positions, we have softball and baseball to pique our interest.
Speaking of softball, the Sooner softball team continues to win at a record pace as they swept Iowa State over the weekend to notch their 25th win in a row. I know we are talking Iowa State here, but I believe this year’s Cyclone team was a decent team competitively. Every little bit will help as we prepare for OSU and Texas down the road.
The Sooners are hitting at an unbelievable pace. This teams reminds me of the Norman 1st Baptist slow pitch team of old. They were church league behemoths as they reminded those of us from Sinclair Baptist of the Bronx Bombers. The balls screamed off their bats at lethal speeds.
After the Iowa State series, the batting average for the starting lineup is a salty .454. After walks are figured into the equation, this team is getting on base every other time up to the plate. Patty is also rounding her pitching rotation into shape as well, a move that will provide us with three solid pitchers for those tough three-game series down the road.
Baseball survived a tough swing through Texas last week as they dropped three in a row to Texas State and Texas. It could have been a lot worse however as the Sooners had to score a run in the 9th to eke out a 3-2 win in the finale in Austin. This may not seem like a big deal, but had the Sooners dropped that final game and headed home to face OSU on Tuesday with their tails between their legs, this season could have gone south in a hurry.
As it is, this team still has a lot of upside for this year and beyond. In the Texas series we had five freshmen in the starting lineup. We also must keep in mind that this team knocked off top ranked Arkansas in front of 8,000 fans in Fayetteville last week. As we always say…small steps.
Boomer Sooner…