Softball

[sybarite]

After winning 9-0 in five against Western Kentucky, OU leads Evansville 2-0 after three. Lowary pitching.

 

[sybarite]

2-1 after four. Florey of Evansville hit her second home run in two days against Lowary. They are the only home runs she has this year. Both were to right, the opposite field.

Against right handed hitters, OU uses a strange shift when Lowary pitches. They don't believe anyone can pull her. So, think of your usual infield.

Romero is more than usual off the third base line.
Arnold is about where SS would normally play.
Clifton is moved over to the hole between first and second.
Knighten is almost at the first base bag.
Dalton comes in from left and plays a normal second base.

Pendley shifts a bit to right center. Aviu tends to move to the line.

 

[sybarite]

home run by Pendley and a single to center by Wodach that plates Dalton,, and it is 4-1 after five. Parker relieves Lowary.

 

[sybarite]

A pinch hit two-run home run made it 5-4. OU wins.

Evansville hit five home runs in two games. The three hitters involved had only hit one other home run this year.

 

[sybarite]

Shay gets a rest vs Western Kentucky.

Shay gets a rest.

2B Clifton
SS Arnold
DP Aviu
3B Romero
CF Pendley
LF Dalton
1B Mendes
C Sparks
RF Hatfield

SP Lopez

Change at the bottom:
Sparks C
Mendes RF
Hatfield 1B

 

[sybarite]

OU scored two in the fifth to beat Western Kentucky 2-1. W Ky got a lead off home run in the ninth. Lopez went the distance. She had 8 Ks and no walks, allowed four hits.

 

[Stringmusic]

Thanks, Syb, for this update.

 

[sybarite]

http://robocoach.websitetoolbox.com/post/how-the-top-25-fared-week-4-8436136?pid=1295014962

 

[SuperHoops]

OU scored two in the fifth to beat Western Kentucky 2-1. W Ky got a lead off home run in the ninth. Lopez went the distance. She had 8 Ks and no walks, allowed four hits.

Are they playing nine inning games this year?

 

[sybarite]

Are they playing nine inning games this year?

No, But, I'm not always thinking when I type. My thoughts may be on the next sentence.

 

[SoonerTraveler]

Softball: Updated Game Notes / pdf file:
https://admin.xosn.com/pdf9/5294373.pdf?DB_OEM_ID=31000&DB_OEM_ID=31000

The stats summary is on the last page .. page 29.

 

[sybarite]

Game at 6:00 on UVerse 649.

 

[sybarite]

2B Clifton
SS Arnold
CF Pendley
3B Romero
DP Aviu
1B Knighten
SP Parker
LF Rogers
C Wodach

RF Hatfield

 

[SoonerTraveler]

OU & Tulsa tied ... 0-0 in the bottom of the 10th.
Sooners have runners on 2nd and 3rd.

EDIT: Sooners win 1-0.

Parker pitches 10 inning shutout, giving up only 2 hits. She faced 33 batters over 10 innings, as she gave up one walk, and had 7 strike outs.

Caleigh Clifton gets a hit to bring in the winning run.

 

[SoonerSpock]

Was checking on the stats of some of the top ten team's YTD cumulative stats and found a couple I considered alarming. OU is 16-4 for the season and in 136 innings our pitchers have allowed 17 home runs. Auburn is 20-2 and in 138 innings have allowed only 2 home runs. Florida is 20-1 and in 131.1 inning have allowed only 1 home run.

OU's era is 2.00. Florida's is 0.70. Auburn's is 0.66. OU has played a slightly tougher schedule than either Auburn or Florida having played 2 more power 5 schools and 2 more ranked schools than Auburn. We have played 2 more power 5 schools and 3 more ranked schools than Florida. But of course when they go into the SEC conference schedule their number of ranked opponents will grow quickly as 10 SEC schools are presently ranked in the top 25. The Big 2 12 has 2.

For certain we need to immediately address the problem of giving up the Big Fly as Parker has lost 3 of our 4 losses to home runs surrendered. Also we do have 2 remaining games with SEC schools (Mississippi State and Arkansas) and neither are presently ranked.

 

[j2d2]

Home Runs: the opposition is hitting them and we are not.
We are strangely passive at the plate. There seems to be no confidence or aggression. We take strikes but dont swing often and dont hit the ball hard at all. There must be a rule at OU that hitters are forbidden to swing at the first pitch even though pitchers like to get the first pitch in. Very strange.

 

[scrybe]

Are the last two posters implying that OU players are receiving inferior coaching?

 

[SoonerSpock]

Are the last two posters implying that OU players are receiving inferior coaching?

Difficult labeling the problem as coaching when the same coaching staff won the national championship last year and return seven starters at the plate plus their top pinch hitter. The team hit 70 home runs last year and return players that hit 55 of those 70 home runs.

I think this team is missing Erin Miller and Kady Self as team leaders. I know Patty gave them immense credit for the development of the team last year when they started 4 freshmen. There is only one senior on this club and that is Macy Hatfield who has never been a starter for the Sooners and may not be capable of being the team leader. She had only 110 AB's her first 3 seasons with the Sooners never getting more than 40 AB's in a season.

Last year OU got a new hitting coach in J.T. Gasso, Patty's son, and the Sooners hit .351 as a team for the season which ranked 2nd nationally. We were #29 nationally in home runs hit. The previous season the Sooners hit 107 home runs when Tripp MacKay was the batting coach but that team had Lauren Chamberlain and Shelby Pendley who hit 47 of those 107 home runs. MacKay was hired as the hitting coach at Texas in July.

Not likely we can go yard 70 times this year as we would have to hit 1.5 home runs per game the remainder of the season and we do not have a Shelby or Lauren on this club. 50-60 is probably a good number for 2017.

This year almost every hitter is hitting less than they did last year and we are only hitting .310 as a team which ranks #53 nationally. That is quite a disparity from 2016 but there are signs that some of the hitters are beginning to swing the bat better.

Kelsey Arnold has raised her BA from .099 to .283 in the last 6 ball games. Kelsey hit .382 last year. Freshman Alissa Dalton has bumped her average from .200 to .333 in the last two weeks. But the big problem at the plate has been Shay Knighten who is hitting .232 down from .397 and she was our best home run hitter last year with 13. Also Lea Wodach hit .315 last year and is hitting .154. Sydney Romero's average is down from .346 to .328.

We have seen improvement over last year for Caleigh Clifton up from .351 to .441 and Nicole Pendley up from .321 to .364. Nicole has 7 home runs this year and only had 8 last year. In fact Nicole has hit 7 of the teams 9 home runs for the season. Fale Aviu is hitting about the same as last year at .350.

Parker is throwing the ball about the same as last year with an ERA of 1.73 vs 1.64 last year. Except she has allowed 9 home runs this year and while my reference data does not show how many home runs she allowed last year no way did she give up anything close to 35 big flies she would have allowed home runs at the rate she is this year.

 

[sybarite]

I am not buying into any theories involving coaching or the loss of Erin and Kady yet. What seems apparent is that the entire team is not meeting the ball solidly this year. We are seeing a lot more popups and weak ground balls. The infield isn't even being challenged to make a play on a lot of these ground balls.

I think it is more likely to be the injuries to Shay and Sydney. Last year, they could be counted on to hit the ball hard, even when they made outs. That isn't true right now. The rest of the team takes its lead from these two. These were our two leaders last year, the ones that seemed to make things happen. At this point, Sydney has already struck out four times. That was her total last year. Shay is on about the same track as last year on K's. But, she is hitting nothing hard, except for that weekend in Houston. She was 8 for 14 in Houston. She is 5 for 42 the rest of the year. We had a game where they came up three times with the bases loaded. Last year, that would have been good for at least six runs. This year, it produced three weak pop outs. I don't know that the rest of the team is that much different. These two were the keys, and they are down. Go back and look at our title run and see how many of our key hits were by these two. Want our hitting back? Get these two healthy.

 

[sybarite]

A few facts from last year:
Shay in the regionals was 5 for 8 with a double, 4RBIs, 2 runs scored.
Super-regionals, Shay was 2 for 8, 2 runs scored, 2 RBIs.
CWS: Shay was 9 for 19, 2 runs scored, two home runs, 8 RBIs.

Sidney:
Regionals: 2 for 9, double, two runs scored, 2 RBIs
Supers: 4 for 8, four runs scored, two home runs, 2 RBIs
CWS: 5 for 18, two home runs, 4 runs scored, 6 RBIs

We scored 19, 15, and 29 runs. Of those, 16 were scored by Shay or Sydney. Another 24 were driven in by Shay and Sydney. Of 63 runs, they drove in or scored 40. They were two thirds of our offense in productivity.