After three road trips to open the season, Oklahoma finally gets a much-needed home stand.<\/p>\n
The Sooners (13-2) play 14 of their next 15 games at home, giving them an extended stay at Love\u2019s Field. They\u2019ll spend the next three weekends in Norman after opening the season with road trips to Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California.<\/p>\n
The home stand gives the Sooners an opportunity to relax, recover and build on the good and bad from the first 15 games of the season. Here\u2019s a few notes from OU coach Patty Gasso\u2019s media session on Tuesday:<\/p>\n
Weekend schedule<\/p>\n
6 p.m. Thursday, Alabama State, SECN+<\/p>\n
2 p.m. Friday, Sam Houston State, SECN+<\/p>\n
5:30 p.m. Friday, Alabama State, SECN+<\/p>\n
2 p.m. Saturday, Sam Houston State, SECN+<\/p>\n
5:30 p.m. Saturday, Alabama State, SECN+<\/p>\n
12:30 p.m. Sunday, Southeastern Louisiana, SECN+<\/p>\n
Sooners learn valuable lessons over the weekend<\/p>\n
The Sooners posted a 5-1 record at the Mary Nutter Classic last weekend, but Saturday was a particularly rough day.<\/p>\n
The Sooners dropped their first game to Long Beach State, 6-4 \u2014 a game they trailed by four runs heading into the seventh inning, they fell behind by three runs to California before eventually rallying to win 7-5.<\/p>\n
They responded to a rough day with a 15-2 blowout win over Washington on Sunday, the kind of response Gasso needed to see. But there were plenty of lessons to learn from Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re going to lose to anyone, it should be my alma mater,\u201d Gasso joked, \u201cbut I didn\u2019t like that on the other side. (The message was), if you think you can get away with playing average and thinking it\u2019s good enough to win and beat anyone, you\u2019re wrong. We didn\u2019t have the mentality, we didn\u2019t have the energy, we didn\u2019t have the focus, we didn\u2019t have \u2014 to be honest \u2014 a lot of leadership that\u2019s recognizing this and saying, \u2018Stop this right now.\u2019 <\/p>\n
\u201cSo 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. We talked about it, and it was more of like, we need to present who we are on Sunday. It\u2019s a ranked team, it\u2019s Washington and we have big history them so it would send a message, not necessarily to Washington, but to ourselves. Showing us how we have to come out play every week. We could have fallen asleep from the last weekend. We got a lot of unworthy praise, and that showed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Isabela Emerling finding her spot?<\/p>\n
It was clear early that freshman catcher Kendall Wells was going to be too good to keep off the field. That put Isabela Emerling in a tough spot.<\/p>\n
However, the veteran has responded in a real way.<\/p>\n
Emerling has started 10 of 15 games and finding a real spot in the rotation at first base. She\u2019s also displayed much more consistency at the plate \u2014 she\u2019s batting .419 at the plate with a .486 on-base percentage, and she\u2019s blasted five home runs.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s still early in the season, but Emerling\u2019s response has been encouraging.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has raised her hand and said, \u2018I want to help lead,’\u201d Gasso said. \u201cShe\u2019s got a great voice\u2026 She\u2019s probably the most heard voice of all the players. I think Kendall coming here is one of the hardest things maybe she\u2019s had to deal with, but one of the best things because you have to \u2014 anytime you have somebody standing next to you, you gotta raise your game and she has raised her game. She has also raised her game at first base. <\/p>\n
\u201cBoth of those catchers have learned how to play good first base because if you want to be in the lineup and you\u2019re not catching, you can\u2019t play anywhere else, where am I supposed to put you? So they have worked really hard to learn that position and play it and be in the lineup. I think Kendall here has \u2014 she may not admit it, but I think it\u2019s one of the best pushes she\u2019s had in her career.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miali Guachino starting to emerge<\/p>\n
Audrey Lowry was the standout pitcher through the first two weekends. But last weekend, it was Guachino who was the most effective in the circle.<\/p>\n
Guachino pitched 13.2 innings in five appearances, allowing just 12 hits, six earned runs and three walks while striking out 19 batters. It was an encouraging performance after she showed flashes the previous weekend, and her ability to generate strikeouts has stood out in OU\u2019s crowded pitching staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve seen it in glimpses in her at Ole Miss,\u201d Gasso said. \u201cSo I know she has it. It\u2019s just sometimes they make this program too big and they feel like they have to be perfect playing in it and we\u2019re showing them they don\u2019t need to be. Our offense will score runs for you. She did a really good job. She gave up two homers after we scored quite a few against Washington, but after that she got it out of her system. She really went to work. So I\u2019m really excited about the pitcher that she\u2019s about\u00a0to become.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After three road trips to open the season, Oklahoma finally gets a much-needed home stand. The Sooners (13-2)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-193736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193736","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=193736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}