OKLAHOMA CITY — There was good and bad for Oklahoma Saturday.
The 11th-ranked Sooners had to go against two ranked teams (No. 25 Oklahoma State and No. 14 Louisville) in The Preview at ASA Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma City, and they came out with a split.
OU dropped the early game, a rare non-conference Bedlam meeting, 1-0, then picked up a 10-2 victory over the Cardinals in the nightcap.
“We’re still learning,” OU coach Patty Gasso said. “One thing we learned in the first game was that we have to come ready to play.”
The big game of the day was the Bedlam meeting in the afternoon. Fans of both schools showed up for the first game of the year between the intrastate rivals, and for the first time since 2003, the Cowgirls came out on top.
Anna Whiddon threw a complete-game shutout, allowing just one OU hit and two walks in seven innings.
The Sooners put a runner on in the seventh inning, and hit two hard balls, but couldn’t plate a run to tie it.
It was the second emotional game in less than 24 hours for OU, which had to come back to beat Nevada at home in nine innings Friday night.
“I felt like after that game last night, and it was a hard-fought, come-from-behind game, I was uncomfortable going into (Bedlam),” Gasso said. “We went through such a range of emotions last night. But that’s absolutely no excuse for our performance. I give credit to OSU. Their pitcher did a great job and they were ready to go after us. We just didn’t go up the way we needed to.”
After the mostly quiet afternoon, the Sooner bats woke up in the fourth inning against Louisville.
Karolyne Long hit a two-run homer in the frame, her first of the season. That got the ball rolling for the Sooners. Jessica Shults drove in two more runs with a double down the left-field line and Haley Nix capped the inning with a run-scoring single.
Nix, Shults and Amber Flores all added home runs late in the game as OU ran away with it.
“It’s almost like we were waiting for someone to strike,” Gasso said. “After Karolyne’s big bomb, it was like ‘Ok, alright, everyone exhale. Let’s just get back to who we are.’ Everything kind of came together after that.”
Freshman pitcher Keilani Ricketts picked up her third loss of the season against the Cowgirls, but won her ninth game in the nightcap, coming in in relief of Kirsten Allen in the fourth inning, just in time to benefit from OU’s offensive explosion.
Allen allowed two unearned runs in three innings on three hits.
“I really am pleased with Kirsten Allen,” Gasso said. “She’s really become a nice complement to Keilani Ricketts. We made the change because there were a lot of lefties coming up in a row, and Keilani is always a good matchup for lefty-lefty.”
The victory over the Cardinals was a big boost for the Sooners, who could have let both games get away from them after the Bedlam defeat.
“It was real rough,” Long said. “You just have to let (the loss) motivate you. You have to get ready to go out again and take that into the next game.”
The Sooners (14-3) and Cardinals (14-4) do it all over again today at noon at Marita Hynes Field.
“Louisville is a much better team than they showed there,” Gasso said. “I know they’re going to come back ready to play tomorrow.”
Jeff Johncox 366-3535 jjohncox@normantranscript.com
