ou softball
OKLA HOMA CITY — The top-ranked Oklahoma Sooners softball team was seeking a berth into the championship series of the 2023 Women’s College World Series on early Monday at Hall of Fame Stadium.
The Sooners, who opened the WCWS with a 2-0 win over Stanford on Thursday and a 9-0 run-rule win Saturday afternoon, faced Stanford for the right to reach the national championship series. If the Cardinal avenged its loss to the Sooners, the same two teams will play a winner-take-all game to reach the finals.
The Sooners, the topseeded team and ranked No. 1 in the nation, saw their pitcher Jordy Bahl outduel Stanford’s freshman phenom NiJaree Canady in Thursday afternoon’s opener, won by OU 2-0.
The third-largest crowd (12,379) in WCWS history was treated to an old-fashioned pitching duel.
Bahl scattered five hits, struck out 11 and walked one in her complete- game shutout. It was Bahl’s 11th career double-digit strikeout game and her first in the postseason.
Canady countered by allowing four hits and an earned run with seven strikeouts and a walk in five innings. Incredibly, OU’s two runs were a season high against Canady, who left after 99 pitches.
OU scored both its runs on three-time first team All-American Jayda Coleman’s two-out, line-drive to left field in the fifth inning with Avery Hodge at second base and Rylie Boone at first. Hodge was pinchrunning for Alynah Torres, who had singled to center.
Hodge was rounding third and would have scored even if Stanford leftfielder Elle Eck had fielded Coleman’s hit cleanly. Boone dashed home for the second run as Eck chased down the ball that had gotten by her.
In OU’s win over Tennessee, the Sooners (581) extended their Division I record winning streak to 50 straight. They set a school record with their 34th shutout of the season, eclipsing the previous mark of 33 set last year and have now won 17 straight games the last three seasons against Southeastern Conference opponents, a league they will join in the 202425 school year. They became the first team since Florida in 2017 to start the WCWS with back-to-back shutouts. It marked just the third time this season the 50-win Volunteers have been shut out.
Bahl (20-1) got the win, working 3.2 innings and throwing just 54 pitches. No Tennessee runner reached third base the entire game.
Meanwhile, OU scored all its runs in the second and third innings, had at least one baserunner in every inning, but left the bases loaded in the first. Seven different Sooners scored and eight of their nine starters reached base.
The beginning of the end for Tennessee came with two out and two on in the second inning when OU second baseman Tiare Jennings hit a line drive over the fence in left-center to give the Sooners a 3-0 lead.
In the bottom of the fourth, Sooners senior catcher Kinzie Hansen hit a line-drive homer to left-center that was hit even harder and lower than Jennings’. Hansen’s two-run shot made the score 5-0 and, again, immediately chased Tennessee’s second pitcher from the game.
Kylie Boone’s tworun triple to left-center later in the third inning pushed the score to 7-0 with one out.
