What did Oklahoma Learn From Loss to Long Beach State?

NORMAN — Patty Gasso doesn’t want her team to learn lessons like it did Saturday at the Mary Nutter Collegiate Classic in Cathedral Springs, CA.

Oklahoma sleepwalked through a pair of games, losing to Long Beach State 6-4 and then beating Cal 7-5.

Gasso was a bit disappointed in leadership over the course of that day, but remained confident her team would grow from the experience.

“If you think you can get away with playing average and thinking it’s good enough to win and beat anyone, you’re wrong,” Gasso said. “We didn’t have the mentality, we didn’t have the energy, we didn’t have the focus, we didn’t have — to be honest — a lot of leadership that’s recognizing this and saying, ‘Stop this right now.’ So it was really frustrating to watch that. And then the second game against Cal didn’t go that much better. Same thing could have happened to us. So we just didn’t have a good Saturday and it was frustrating.”

The Sooners are 13-2 so far, and have come back the day after losses in big ways.

When they dropped the second game of the season to Arizona, 11-6, on Feb. 6, they came back the next day and dismantled those same Wildcats 21-3 in five innings.

Though the performance in the immediate game following the Long Beach State loss wasn’t great, it was the same day as the loss.

The next day, the Sooners hammered Washington, a team receiving votes in the NFCA poll, 15-2 in five innings.

The lessons were clear, Gasso said.

“I don’t think any of them were really feeling their best or playing their best and when that’s not you as a leader, you feel like, ‘Well, I’m not feeling my best so I shouldn’t say anything.’ Like, we’ve got to stop this. You’ve got to stop this. A leader is a leader is a leader. If you volunteered to be a leader, you can’t step out of that role when you don’t feel like it. You have to keep going through it and some people are not starting. ‘Well, I can’t be a leader if I’m not on the field.’ There’s just zero excuse for it and they’ve learned that. They’ve heard me talk about that.”

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The Sooners have blown out Duke, Washington and Arizona so far this season and won close games against Arizona and Arizona State.

So there is already some feathers in Oklahoma’s NCAA Tournament resume cap.

But it wasn’t that long ago that the Sooners were fighting to be considered a top eight seed nationally even with a sterling record, and though the SEC schedule makes that unlikely as long as Oklahoma performs well in the conference, Gasso remembers the sting that losses like Saturday’s to Long Beach State can have.

“We can’t afford to learn those lessons anymore, because when you have, maybe a team that you’ve lost to that’s unranked, the committee can really hold that on you,” Gasso said. “I’ve seen it happen. So it’s really important now that we get opportunities against ranked teams that we make the most of that. … They’re learning how this system works and it’s not like anyone went home and cried over the loss against Long Beach because we had to turn around and play, but they have to learn what it means.”