Oklahoma Pitching Staff Hoping for Resurgence Entering Postseason

NORMAN — Patty Gasso’s message to her pitchers is simple.

“Just get the out, however it looks,” the Oklahoma softball coach said Tuesday of her pitching staff. “Screaming line drive, we don’t care. Let us make the play. I need them to understand that and not get caught up in their own performance.”

Heading into the postseason, which begins when the No. 3 seed Sooners take on Binghamton at 2:30 p.m. Friday at Love’s Field, the biggest question mark surrounding OU is the pitching.

The Sooners have used a deeper group of pitchers than they have in recent years, but they lack the ace that has been a staple of Gasso-Jennifer Rocha coached teams.

Several in the group — most notably Audrey Lowry, Miali Guachino and Sydney Berzon — have had their moments, but none has been able to be consistently dominant.

Lowry has been the leader of the staff for much of the season, but since throwing a complete-game shutout at Texas on April 10, then coming back with a scoreless inning of relief the next night, the sophomore has posted a 5.75 ERA.

Her season ERA had crept up to 2.70.

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Among the four pitchers who have thrown the vast majority of the innings so far for OU, none has an ERA better than Berzon’s 2.69 and the team ERA in 3.15.

Since posting a 0.96 ERA in 2023 with a staff that featured Jordy Bahl, Nicole May and Alex Storako, the team ERA has steadily climbed, to 1.99 in 2024 and 2.66 last season before taking another jump up this year.

Gasso said her pitchers have at times been hampered by overthinking.

“One pitch at a time, one out at a time, don’t let the moment get too big, don’t look ahead, don’t look behind,” Gasso said. “Sometimes they’ll go back and go, ‘Oh, last time I threw her this and she hit it hard.’ Just let those things leave your mind and just go on to the next pitch, the next play or whatever.

“That’s the message to the entire team. They’re so hard — they’re hard on themselves, a lot of these athletes, because they’re elite and they want to be great and when they don’t get what they want, they’re not happy. And I understand it but it doesn’t make for a good mood sometimes for our team so we need to forget about ourselves and celebrate other things that we’re seeing on the field.”

Gasso said she’s been encouraged by how her team, in particular the pitchers, have responded since losing to Georgia in their opening game of the SEC Tournament.

“You’re starting to see a little more of that,” Gasso said, continuing her thought process on celebrating smaller victories. “I walk away from practice going, ‘Right on, we’ve got this,’ ‘we’ve knocked that out,’ or ‘we’re figuring this out.’ So we’re following right along.”

Gasso is also hoping that stepping outside of the SEC will help her pitchers.

Over the last four weekends of conference play and in their game in the SEC Tournament, the Sooners have faced a string of teams that enter the NCAA Tournament in the top 21 nationally in batting average.

Georgia, who Oklahoma faced four times during that span, is No. 6 nationally with a .355 team batting average.

Among the three other teams in the Norman Regional, none is higher than No. 31 nationally. Kansas is hitting .329 as a team.

Binghamton enters No. 52 nationally with a .319 team batting average, while Michigan is No. 72 at .311.

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