Oklahoma Softball: Patty Gasso’s 2022 Champions Finish as the Best Team in History

OKLAHOMA CITY — Patty Gasso was conscious of the expectations.

Getting into 2022, the Oklahoma Sooners have been an unanimous preseason No. 1 choice.

OU was a defending Nationwide Champion, and solely needed to exchange three tremendous seniors.

Jocelyn Alo was again to interrupt the school softball’s profession house run report, and Gasso struggled to tamp down expectations for true freshman pitcher Jordy Bahl.

Beneath all of that strain, Gasso’s message was to neglect in regards to the previous and assault 2022 as a brand new problem.

“A very powerful factor that I do know by expertise is that you don’t look by the rearview mirror,” Gasso mentioned all the best way again in February. “You look out by the entrance windshield and also you see what’s forward of you.”

So with Bahl and transfers Alyssa Brito and Hope Trautwein in tow, the Sooners set out on a brand new path in 2022.

And extremely, they have been higher.

The 2022 Oklahoma Sooners closed the 12 months as one of the best crew to ever take the sector.

Oklahoma dominated within the early phases of the season, breezing by the Mark Campbell Invitational the place UCLA the place Bahl fanned 14 Bruins, in addition to conquering the Mary Nutter Traditional regardless of a welcome befitting of a world famend rock band.

OU ripped off 38-straight wins to start out the season, a brand new NCAA Division I softball report, and fell simply seven video games shy of matching the longest win streak within the historical past of the game.

Gasso’s crew logged run rule victories in 40 of their 62 video games this 12 months, additionally a brand new report, and would have run dominated the Texas Longhorns in each WCWS championship collection video games if the mercy rule wasn’t exempt at that stage.

Ending the 12 months with a canine pile in Oklahoma Metropolis, OU climbed to the mountaintop of the game for the sixth time in program historical past and completed with a 59-3 report.

Oklahoma’s 2022 profitable proportion fell a proportion level wanting UCLA’s 1992 squad, however the Sooners have been extra dominant.

OU solely dropped three video games in 2022, as soon as to Texas, as soon as to Oklahoma State and as soon as to UCLA, that means each single loss Oklahoma sustained this 12 months got here to a crew that reached the semifinals within the WCWS.

In different contests towards the Longhorns, Cowgirls and Bruins this season, the Sooners went 10-0, outscoring the trio by a mixed rating of 82-14 in these 10 contests.

Oklahoma dominated seemingly each main statistical class as properly this season.

The Sooners completed the season ranked first in batting common (.371), on base proportion (.474), house runs per recreation (2.50), slugging proportion (.734) and earned run common (1.05).

Even UCLA’s 1992 crew couldn’t match that degree of domination, because the Bruins completed tenth in batting common, second in ERA, twenty first in scoring and eighth in house runs.

Oklahoma’s statistical dominance wasn’t only a product of beating up on an everyday season schedule and barely making it throughout the end line, both.

The Sooners posted run rule victories in 5 of their 9 NCAA Match video games earlier than the WCWS championship collection, too.

All instructed, Oklahoma outscored opponents 64-17 in Oklahoma Metropolis, dominating anybody who stood in OU’s method on the WCWS.

After the celebrations on the sector subsided, Gasso mentioned it was as much as the media to resolve if her 2022 squad was one of the best within the sport or not.

Alo was much less bashful.

“I believe that is one of the best crew,” Alo mentioned with amusing on Thursday. “However one factor about Sooner softball, and I’ve seen it 12 months in and 12 months out, is they simply proceed to get higher.

“I do not know what holds subsequent 12 months, however I do know that they could possibly be a run for one of the best crew too and years to return.”

Although Gasso was simply targeted on having fun with the second after profitable her sixth Nationwide Championship, she did briefly supply a window into what she thought this crew could possibly be again in January when she was speaking about the right way to encourage a crew coming off a title-winning season.

“If my coach instructed me, ‘you could possibly be the best softball crew of all time,’ that will make me need to play exhausting,” she mentioned. “That might get me fired up.”

Mission achieved.

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