Texas vs. Oklahoma and Washington vs. Tennessee in Second Day of WCWS
When Oklahoma and Texas meet Friday evening in a second round game in the 32nd annual Women’s College World Series, it will be the fourth game between the two Big 12 rivals. The teams played in Austin April 19-21 with OU winning the first game, 6-1, losing the second 4-2 and taking the series with a 5-3 win. OU leads the overall series 25-23. But that was the regular season and this game will be about survival in the ultimate college softball event—the Women’s College World Series.
OU standout Lauren Chamberlain, who had a two-run homer in Thursday’s 7-1 win over Michigan, said when asked about Friday’s game against the Longhorns: “It’s going to be a fun game.” OU head coach Patty Gasso said, “we’re excited.” Friday’s game should be power against power with Keilani Ricketts expected to take the mound for the Sooners with Texas figuring to throw Blaire Luna, who defeated ASU Thursday evening, 6-3, to advance the Longhorns, who stunned the Sun Devils who rarely have lost opening games in the WCWS under Coach Clint Myers.
But you never know what’s going to happen in the WCWS and that’s what makes this event the best ticket in town. Through the first four games 16,771 fans had attended, thus indicating the WCWS could break another attendance record after more than 75,000 attending last year.
Besides Texas and OU playing each other, Thursday’s two other winners, Washington and Tennessee, will play in the opening game Friday at 6 p.m. Washington needed eight innings to beat Nebraska 4-3 while Tennessee disposed of Florida, 9-2. Tennessee used 13 players on offense in the Florida win and eight of them produced at least one hit on their way to 11 total, which produced nine runs. “We got a lot of those hits down in the bottom of the order because Hannah (Rogers) is so great and because of the respect we had against her, we worked against Hannah all week, emulating her. So we were a little surprised when (Lauren) Haeger came in,” said Tennessee co-head coach Ralph Weekly. “We were really prepared for Hannah and I think that helped us get out and get a lot of hits.” Rogers pitched only one-third of an inning (24 pitches to be exact) and allowed three runs.
