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    Patty Gasso Super Regional press conference

    COLUMN: Winning Streak? Patty Gasso Says Get That Stuff Outta Here

    The Sooners are No. 1 in the nation and lead the softball world in every statistical category, but Gasso says they want just one more thing: another national title.

    NORMAN — Outside, Home Run Village is quiet. The Oklahoma pitchers are on the third base line comparing a few more notes about Clemson. A tractor has begun smoothing out the dirt on Marita Hynes Field. 

    And as the historic facility gets one final makeover in preparation for a Super Regional this weekend against the Tigers, Patty Gasso sits in the team room wagging her finger at a reporter.

    Literally wagging it, like Dikembe Mutombo after blocking a shot.

    Get that stuff outta here.

    Patty Gasso 

    Patty Gasso 

    The topic, of course, is the Sooners’ incredible winning streak. It’s at 46 now. If top-ranked OU beats Clemson in Game 1 on Friday, it’ll tie Arizona’s 1996-97 all-time mark of 47 straight.

    At Oklahoma, the words “47 straight” are not used lightly. Bud Wilkinson’s football Sooners set the all-time NCAA Division I football standard by winning 47 straight back in the 1950s. Former Sooners stats man, historian and publicist extraordinaire wrote a book about Wilkinson’s streak, and titled his tome — simply, appropriately — “47 Straight.”

    Now it’s Gasso’s Sooners who have created a monster that needs to be fed.

    Like Wilkinson, Gasso doesn’t like to talk about the streak. Doesn’t even like to get questions about it. Her finger-wag was accompanied by a playful smile, but while the question was coming, she made it clear she wants no part of it.

    “No, 100 percent,” she said. “I’m not somebody that even knows unless you all are even saying it. I don’t count the wins. I don’t look back in record books. What does this do for us? What does this give us? It gives us maybe a bragging right? Our players don’t talk about it. I don’t talk about it. We don’t think about it. We just want to get to the World Series. That’s it.”

    As Gasso said, sometimes it seems like the multitude of trophies laying around the coaches offices or the team room or the complex in general look like doorstops. She said that’ll be fixed next year, when new Love’s Field allows for an actual trophy case.

    It better be a big one. The monster Gasso has created is hungry every day, and she plans on feeding it often.

    This Sooner team is 54-1 on the season and is chasing several layers of excellence: a third consecutive national championship (only UCLA, in 1988-90, has done that), the best single-season winning percentage in collegiate softball history (.964 by UCLA, which went 54-2 in 1992) and, whether or not Gasso wants to admit it, a mighty impressive winning streak (beating Clemson Friday and Saturday would run OU’s new mark to 48 straight).

    Hitting all three of those marks would indisputably cement this team, which leads the nation in hitting, pitching, defense, home runs and more, as the greatest of all time.

    “However that works, it doesn’t give us anything,” Gasso reiterated. “I doesn’t give us a trophy. Trophies stay here forever. Titles stay here forever. Records are meant to be broken.

    "Nobody thought that Stacey Nuveman’s record would break and then (Lauren) Chamberlain broke it, then (Jocelyn) Alo broke it. These records are all going to be broken — and nobody’s going to care anymore. I don’t get caught up in that, nor does the team. So it’s just focusing on what our goal has been from the beginning and that’s getting to be in that final eight.”

    If the Sooners were chasing the record in the regular season, that would make perfect sense. But with 2023 now having reached postseason status, surely that urgency adds something to the winning streak?

    “Again, I’m not thinking about it, I’m not talking about it,” Gasso insisted, “so I don’t know. I will tell you one thing that is more on my mind than anything is this, I’m trusting, this is our last weekend officially in NCAA play — this is the last time we will be on Marita Hynes Field. That means something to me, because my life was built right here. So those are things that I care more about than (the streak.)”

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