My Thoughts on the Sooners vs the Knights--Weekend Series in Orlando, Fla.

[TropicalSooner]

The Sooners travel to sunny, balmy, Orlando Florida, for a three game series against the UCF Knights. Weather looks great compared to what we've been playing in recently. Expect to see mostly sunny skies with a slight easterly breeze 5-10 Friday evening, and mostly sunny skies and breezier 10-20 out of the SE on Saturday afternoon, and Sunday morning (10am Okla Time!). The Sunday morning game will be on ESPN-U for those that need linear TV.

The Knights are a very veteran team with only one sophomore cracking the starting lineup among the Junior/Senior/and 5th year starters. They are 28-18 on the year and 10-11 in the Big 12. They were swept by Texas and OSU during the season, but they were supposed to have those losses, right? And even there, those losses were generally competitive. But don't let the B12 record fool you. In spite of their bizarre series where they were also swept by lowly Baylor 1-2, 0-1, 0-1, they are in 5th place in the conference standings only a hair behind Kansas, and to me, I feel like they are really the 4th best team in the league. The Knights should definitely be taken very seriously.

Their offense has 4-5 starters hitting over .300 led by 5th yr CF Johneisha Rowe at .382 and 5th yr 3B Jada Cody at .343. They also have a rich bench to pull from, several of which are hitting over .300 in more limited action. As a team, the Knights are hitting .313 scoring 246 runs in 46 games for 5.35 runs/gm. They are not particularly a power hitting team with only 30 HR's on the season, and they have 155 SO's to 129 FB's. However they get on base a lot and are a pretty good running team with 69 SB's iin 80 Att.

Coach Cindy Ball-Malone does run a tight ship with her team and it shows with their improved defense. So far this year they've only made 28 errors for .978 fld %.

Their veteran pitching staff is very good compared to what we've seen recently. The team ERA is at 2.73 but the two starters most used are Junior Kaitlyn Felton 10-4 and 2.55 era and Senior Sarah Willis 8-7 and 2.47 era. Felton has 51 K's to 36 FBs over 71 IP, and Willis has 87 K's to 47 FB's over 99 IP. I think this staff will be more hard throwing than the weaker pitching staffs we have seen from other teams and that might bode well for our offense. Fun facts: their pitching staff has a lot of history against the Sooners. Back in 2021, Sarah Willis played for the Washinton Huskies at that time and faced Nicole May in the Super Regional in Norman and she only managed one single and struck out once in 3 at bats while playing RF as a freshman. The Huskies primarily used her as an outfielder during the two years she was there but after transferring to UCF last year, has been used mostly as a pitcher but also hits in the lineup as well. Backup pitchers Grace Jewell and Angelina DeVoe pitched against us in the first game of the '22 Super Regional, and starter Kaitlyn Felton pitched part of the second game in that Super Regional series as well. Also, reliever Sona Halajian has history with us. She is a transfer from Cal this year and pitched the final two innings in last year's Regional run-rule loss to the Sooners. So while they have seen the Magnificent Seven a few times, we have also seen them. And I like our odds in that match-up.

Besides the pitching staff, many of the current team veterans were on the team that came to Norman for the 2022 Super Regional and I'm sure they have not forgotten the 8-0 run rule and 7-1 losses they took at the hands of the Alo-led Sooners that year. Now they have us in their home stadium and I expect they want to try to extract some revenge for those losses.

I see the series with UCF as a pivot point in our season. Currently we are in 1st place in the B12 at 18-3 with #2 Texas 17-4 and #3 OSU 16-5 breathing down our necks. Texas almost has a free pass for the rest of the season with a series at home against Iowa State and then at Taco Tech in Lubbock. They should win both of those series easily. Similarly, the Cowgirls face Kansas at home this weekend in a tune-up before coming to Norman the following week. For us to win the conference, we will need to win all 6 of our remaining games. If we stumble and lose one (or more) games in Orlando against the Knights, we will not only lose the conference race but more importantly will have to address the level of confidence we have for the upcoming post season. But if we win all three games against UCF, we can use that as a boost to our season and put us on a much stronger footing to face the surprisingly feisty and scrappy Cowgirls when they come to Norman in two weeks for Bedlam and the conference championship.