OU Softball: Looking Back on Oklahoma's Four Matchups With Texas and What They Mean Today

The Sooners and Longhorns meet again at Devon Park, this time playing for a national title at the Women's College World Series.

Oklahoma's Kinzie Hansen / SARAH PHIPPS/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY

OKLAHOMA CITY — Four meetings between Oklahoma and Texas simply wasn’t enough in 2024. 

The top-seeded Longhorns took the regular season series against No. 2-seeded Oklahoma with a pair of 2-1 wins in Austin, and the Sooners leveled the season series with a 5-1 victory in the Big 12 Tournament Championship.

Now, the Red River Rivals reconvene in Oklahoma City with another trophy on the line. 

The big one.

Patty Gasso and Mike White’s teams meet in the Women’s College World Series Championship Series for the second time in three years. Game one is 7 p.m. Wednesday, with Devon Park as the stage for the grand finale for OU’s decorated seniors. 

And there will be no surprises. 

The teams have scouted each other numerous times over the years. All that’s left is one final series as Big 12 counterparts before both head to the Southeastern Conference next month.

OU took the first meeting of the season, a 5-2 victory in Austin on April 5, thanks in large part to ace Kelly Maxwell. 

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LOOK BACK:

Game 1
Game 2
Game 3
Game 4

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The graduate transfer set her season-high with 10 strikeouts against Texas, a mark that stood until the left-hander fanned 11 UCLA batters on Saturday at the WCWS, as she continued to torment Texas while wearing crimson just as she did when she was an Oklahoma State Cowgirl. 

Maxwell’s drop ball has been lethal over the years, and no Texas batter probably loses more sleep about it than Big 12 Player of the Year Reese Atwood. 

The Longhorn catcher bats .429 on the year and has driven in 90 runs, but she went 1-for-3 with a strikeout against Maxwell that night, kicking off a weekend where she finished 1-for-8 at the plate.

Maxwell’s control set the tone, allowing the Sooners to take a 2-0 lead in the third inning behind an RBI single from Jayda Coleman and an Alyssa Brito sacrifice fly. 

Then Coleman struck again in the fifth. 

She crushed a three-run shot high into the outfield bleachers, giving Oklahoma full command of the contest. 

Texas wouldn’t score until the seventh inning, but it was too little, too late.

The script flipped in the second and third contests, however.

Clutch hitting escaped the Sooners, as OU stranded 12 combined baserunners in the two losses. 

Coleman and Rylie Boone, who were constant threats on the base paths in the series opener, combined to go 2-for-12 in the final two games of the regular season series, opening the door for Texas. 

Nicole May and Maxwell actually did their part in the circle, as Texas shortstop Viviana Martinez and first baseman Katie Stewart dealt all the damage. 

The Longhorn duo hit 4-for-6 in the 2-1 win on April 6 while the rest of Texas’ lineup combined to go 2-for-17, and a pair of RBI doubles undid OU. 

Maya Bland had a chance to score to level the game with two outs in the stop of the seventh, but an excellent play by center fielder Kayden Henry meant the ball was perfectly on time to Atwood to tag out Bland and end the second game of the weekend. 

Stewart proved to be the difference again on April 7, as her two-run bomb outdid Ella Parker’s solo effort to seal the second 2-1 win of the weekend and hand Oklahoma its first Big 12 series defeat since 2011.

But the Sooners would get their shot at revenge. 

Back north of the Red River, OU got off to a blistering start to outpace Texas at the Big 12 title game. 

Tiare Jennings doubled in the first inning to put the Sooners on top, and Kinzie Hansen hit into a fielder’s choice to plate Jennings and put OU up 2-0. 

Henry’s RBI triple pulled a run back for Texas in the second, but Oklahoma added a pair in the third courtesy of Alyssa Brito’s RBI single and a Hansen double, and Boone closed the scoring with an RBI single in the fourth to give the Sooners the 5-1 win. 

Maxwell pitched another gem, throwing 5 1/3 innings while allowing just two hits, three walks and striking out seven batters. 

May entered the game with some traffic on the bases in the fifth, but she recorded five straight outs to close out the win. 

Atwood went 0-for-3 again at the plate, adding another strikeout, as she struggled to figure out OU’s pitching staff. 

The difference in the Big 12 Tournament was Oklahoma’s aggressiveness. 

Gasso’s team hammered Citlaly Gutierrez early in the count, just as they did in the series opener back in Austin, instead of taking pitch after pitch in long, drawn out at-bats. 

Texas will have one glaring advantage on Wednesday night, which is one of the few things to separate teams that are so similar on paper. 

The Longhorns were off Tuesday while Maxwell threw 148 pitches in a dramatic comeback victory over Florida. 

It was a season-high in pitches for Maxwell, and she’ll have no rest should Gasso hand her the ball again on Wednesday. 

But the Sooners have plenty of momentum, as they’re riding the high of avoiding elimination and are one step away from an unprecedented fourth consecutive national championship.