NORMAN \u2014\u00a0Patty Gasso doesn\u2019t want her team to learn lessons like it did Saturday at the Mary Nutter Collegiate Classic in Cathedral Springs, CA.<\/p>\n
Oklahoma sleepwalked through a pair of games, losing to Long Beach State 6-4 and then beating Cal 7-5.<\/p>\n
Gasso was a bit disappointed in leadership over the course of that day, but remained confident her team would grow from the experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you think you can get away with playing average and thinking it\u2019s good enough to win and beat anyone, you\u2019re wrong,\u201d Gasso said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have the mentality, we didn\u2019t have the energy, we didn\u2019t have the focus, we didn\u2019t have \u2014\u00a0to be honest \u2014\u00a0a lot of leadership that\u2019s recognizing this and saying, \u2018Stop this right now.\u2019 So it was really frustrating to watch that. And then the second game against Cal didn\u2019t go that much better. Same thing could have happened to us. So we just didn\u2019t have a good Saturday and it was frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sooners are 13-2 so far, and have come back the day after losses in big ways.<\/p>\n
When they dropped the second game of the season to Arizona, 11-6, on Feb. 6, they came back the next day and dismantled those same Wildcats 21-3 in five innings.<\/p>\n
Though the performance in the immediate game following the Long Beach State loss wasn\u2019t great, it was the same day as the loss.<\/p>\n
The next day, the Sooners hammered Washington, a team receiving votes in the NFCA poll, 15-2 in five innings.<\/p>\n
The lessons were clear, Gasso said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think any of them were really feeling their best or playing their best and when that\u2019s not you as a leader, you feel like, \u2018Well, I\u2019m not feeling my best so I shouldn\u2019t say anything.\u2019 Like, we\u2019ve got to stop this. You\u2019ve got to stop this. A leader is a leader is a leader. If you volunteered to be a leader, you can\u2019t step out of that role when you don\u2019t feel like it. You have to keep going through it and some people are not starting. \u2018Well, I can\u2019t be a leader if I\u2019m not on the field.\u2019 There\u2019s just zero excuse for it and they\u2019ve learned that. They\u2019ve heard me talk about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read More Oklahoma Softball<\/p>\n
The Sooners have blown out Duke, Washington and Arizona so far this season and won close games against Arizona and Arizona State.<\/p>\n
So there is already some feathers in Oklahoma\u2019s NCAA Tournament resume cap.<\/p>\n
But it wasn\u2019t that long ago that the Sooners were fighting to be considered a top eight seed nationally even with a sterling record, and though the SEC schedule makes that unlikely as long as Oklahoma performs well in the conference, Gasso remembers the sting that losses like Saturday\u2019s to Long Beach State can have.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t afford to learn those lessons anymore, because when you have, maybe a team that you\u2019ve lost to that\u2019s unranked, the committee can really hold that on you,\u201d Gasso said. \u201cI\u2019ve seen it happen. So it\u2019s really important now that we get opportunities against ranked teams that we make the most of that. \u2026 They\u2019re learning how this system works and it\u2019s not like anyone went home and cried over the loss against Long Beach because we had to turn around and play, but they have to learn what it means.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NORMAN \u2014\u00a0Patty Gasso doesn\u2019t want her team to learn lessons like it did Saturday at the Mary Nutter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-192345","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-long-beach","9":"tag-long-beach-headlines","10":"tag-long-beach-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}