Last loss no mistake

Commentary

By Clay Horning

It’s not like Patty Gasso’s Sooners are in bad company.

There’s that.

Sherri Coale and Bob Stoops, maybe the two coaches in this town who could ask for a lifetime contract and get the regents to scramble into a meeting by sundown, watched their own storybook teams go down in flames in January and March.

And for crying out loud, one of Barry Switzer’s best teams was stunned, and I mean absolutely stunned because it still doesn’t make any sense, by Lou Holtz’s Arkansas Razorbacks. And if you’re one of Kelvin’s guys, then you have to love Patty Gasso, because this is the first time a team of hers has been stone cold shocked in the postseason and it used to happen to Sampson’s teams all the time, even if Manhattan was enough for everybody.

So there’s all of that.

Not that it makes any sense.

Because this team was so good for so long.

Until it wasn’t.

Seven hits in two games. A bunt, two more infield hits, a blooper, two home runs and a clean double.

If Lauren Eckermann was aces until the end Saturday, she fell short Sunday.

Asked if her stuff was good after OU’s season ended via a 7-2 loss to a DePaul team playing like it invented the game, all she could say was “Not as good as it should have been, obviously.”

But she wasn’t alone.

And that’s the mystery.

Apart from winning and losing, there’s good softball and bad softball and the Sooners didn’t play the former.

Want a moment?

Bottom of the third, after OU had taken its only lead on back to back dingers from Jamie Fox and Lindsey Vandever, after Eckermann walked Sandy Vojik and gave up a hit to Amber Patton … Marcy Wilus lifted a lazy, fly ball to shallow center. It seemed to hang in the air but Fox couldn’t run it down. A run came home, another was plated by Jackie Tarulli-Fisher’s double and two more on Kate Sheaks’ home run.

Maybe the Sooners get out of it if Fox reaches Wilus’ pop.

Top of the fourth, OU the visitor on its own field and Samantha Ricketts gets a leadoff single off DePaul pitcher Becca Heteniak’s glove. That prompted Blue Demon coach Eugene Lenti to bring back Saturday's hero, Tracie Adix, who got Susan Ogden to ground out and Fox to fly out. Next, Vandever hit a diving liner headed to the right-center field gap. But Linda Secka went into full dive for the catch.

If she doesn’t, the Sooners plate a run and who knows how many more.

A play here and a play there and it might have been different.

OU had always made those plays.

Until DePaul came to town.

Gasso said the Blue Demons look like a team “of destiny” and she’s right.

I asked Adix if she could even conceive of a lineup roughing her up as long as she keeps throwing the way she’s been throwing and it was all she could do not to indict an entire nation of hitters. “Not necessarily,” she began, looking for a fence to hop on.

As for the Sooners, Gasso sort of threw up her hands when she wasn’t paying tribute to all the good stuff that happened before OU became possessed by Demons.

The Sooners of March, Gasso said, looked a lot like the DePaul of May. And there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason why OU’s postseason was one gradual slide, even if it included a conference tournament championship.

Good at bats, up and down the order.

Every defensive play.

Pitchers throwing their best stuff.

Put all of that together and … the Blue Demons likely still win.

They’re on fire.

But it would have been a start.

Clay Horning

366-3526

cfhorning@normantranscript.com