Opening Weekend @ Love's Field - Miami (OH), Liberty, Louisiana

[OUBeliever56A]

The Opening Weekend of Love's Field will be all about the newly built Love's Field. It will be the star, the backdrop, the foreground, the Diamond of all Diamond's on Lindsay Street. Love's Field will dominate every look, every gaze and each time there will be something you noticed for the first time. It will take some time to learn where all your old friends are sitting and when and how it will be best to visit them. You will meet new friends that now share your section or row, in front and in back of you. Hopefully you embrace each new face and enjoy the "thing" that we all enjoy so much, Oklahoma Softball. I hope we never take this "thing' for granted. I think with Love's Stadium beneath and around us, that will be hard to do. With the Sooners on the field, you should never be anything but impressed with what they do, and the young ladies that they become in front of our very eyes.

Somewhere in there, there will also be five games of softball played. Oklahoma plays Miami (OH), Liberty and Louisiana in a series of 5 games. The Sooners enter the weekend 14-0 in the midst of a 67-game winning streak that is almost forgotten at times. The Sooners are not playing their best as of yet, but still very good. I think the team is still figuring out just how good they can be. They seem to be working up to something that they may not be able to see just yet. But there are glimpses of what is possible.

Oklahoma Sooners:
The Team Stats are good and will probably move upwards before all is finished. The Team is hitting .357 with a .447 OB% and a Slug% of .601. The Sooners are scoring 7.86 runs per game. The Team ERA is 0.73 with less than 1 hit/walk or HB allowed per inning. They are striking out more than 1 batter per inning. The Team has had 7 run-rule wins and 9 shutouts.

Oklahoma has five starting players hitting over .412 (Pickering, Boone, Jennings, Brito and Parker), two more hitting over .324 (Coleman and Hansen), and two hitting .250 (Sanders and Torres). Six Sooner starters have an OB% of over .455 (Pickering, Parker, Jennings, Boone, Brito and Sanders) and everyone is at .357 of better (Coleman, Hansen and Torres). The Slug% are all over .417 with two at .900 or better (Jennings and Brito). Ludlam has been the best sub for the Sooners as she is hitting .353 BA, .455 OB% and .588 Slug% while playing C and 1B.

The pitching staff has six pitchers with an ERA under 1.43 and 3 with an ERA of 0.00 (Keeney, Monticelli and Geurin). The staff is allowing a .162 BAA. May has 5 wins, Maxwell has 4 wins, Deal and Keeney have 2 wins with Geurin having 1 win. No Sooner pitcher has given up more than 3 earned runs. The Sooners have only given up only 5 EBH in 86 innings.

Miami (OH) RedHawks:
Miami of Ohio will be the first opponent to play in Love's Field. They are 9-2 on the season with a bit of an easy schedule except for two games. I might even be willing to throw Ole Miss in with the 9 lesser teams that Miami has played for 10 lesser teams for a 9-1 record. Only Clemson is a good team among the RedHawks schedule. Clemson defeated Miami 10-1 in five innings. But, so far, against the favorable competition, the RedHawks are hitting the ball with unusual power (34 HRs in 11 games and have solid BA and OB% averages. The Miami pitching staff has a 4.10 ERA but that should be stronger probably with their opponents. They are giving up 1.67 baserunners per inning (high) with 1.07 hits per inning (high). The RedHawks BAA is .264 which is high.

They have six players with 4 or more HRs. Four of those hitters had double digit HRs in 2023 also. their best hitter, Spaid, is having a slow start average wise, but she has 8 HRs.

I think their offensive numbers are a product of their competition level, not their prowess a hitters. But clearly, if the Sooner pitchers make a mistake, the RedHawks can hit it a long ways. I also believe that if Clemson scored 10 and Ole Miss scored 9 runs, the Sooners should score many runs against the RedHawks. The key is for OU to pitch well and keep the ball in the park against Miami. If they do that, everything will be just fine in the first game Friday afternoon at 2 PM.

Liberty Flames:
Liberty is 7-7 on the season as they have only scored 46 runs in 14 games (3.29 runs per game). Their hitting line is .255 BA, .315 OB% and .430 Slug%. Their best hitter is probably Roupe, who has hit 4 HRs and hits .400 in the last two seasons.

They have two pitchers pitching pretty well but two others not so well. Their Team ERA is 3.21. Escobar and Oubre are their two best throwers and both are transfers. Escobar is from North Alabama and Louisiana. Yoder is a freshman with a 3.61 ERA and their #3. Liberty does miss Karlie Keeney I think. If she would have stayed at Liberty, she would likely be their ace.

Liberty has lost to good teams and not defeated many good teams. They seem to be a .500-ish team. I think the Sooners should win two games against the Flames. If Oklahoma wins, they should pick up two comfortable wins on Friday and Saturday in the second game of two DH'ers.

But, I will appreciate seeing Dot Richardson as their coach. For us older softball fans, Coach Richardson was the shortstop of the UCLA at the same time that Coach Stacey Nuveman Deniz (Coach at San Diego State that we played last weekend) was the catcher. Richardson was the speed slapper at the top of the UCLA lineup and Nuveman was the power hitting catcher batting 3rd of 4th in the lineup. At that time, they were the softball 'stars' that every ten-year old young girl knew.

Louisiana Rajin' Cajuns:
Coach Gerry Glasco brings his Rajin' Cajuns into to Love's Field with a somewhat disappointing 8-9 record. I must admit I thought Louisiana was going to be a strong team in 2024. After their 4-1 start opening weekend they have been 2-4 for the next two weekends. They lost 2 of 3 to Baylor and split with Mississippi State and California and lost 2 to Stanford and 2 to Texas. With a pretty tough schedule they have scored only 4.65 runs per game while allowing 3.47 runs per game with an ERA of 2.84 as they have given up 15 unearned runs on 26 errors early in the season.

Mihyia Davis, a sophomore CF, is a special player for Louisiana. She can do it all. She played with Hodge and Geurin on the Texas Bombers as I got to see here while watching the two Sooners. She will bat leadoff probably and don't take your eyes off her. She has been a "walking double" after a steal. As a team, Louisiana is hitting .279 with a .366 OB% and a Slug% of .417. I hope the Louisiana bats do not wake up this weekend. But I do think the Sooner pitching is better than Baylor and Louisiana scored only 6 runs in three games against Baylor.

Sam Landry is their #1 pitcher and is coming off a good 2023 season where she had a 2.13 ERA with low hits and and high strikeouts but there is a few too many walks for my taste in her stats. Louisiana has four other pitchers that can pitch and perhaps win for them. But they need Landry to be good every weekend.

I am pretty sure that Louisiana is the best team that OU will play this weekend. Oklahoma plays them early on Saturday and on Sunday just after lunch. OU will have to play well to pick up two wins against the Rajin' Cajuns. But if the Rajin' Cajuns do not bring their gloves and make a couple errors a game, the games should swing OU's way quickly as giving the Sooners four outs an inning is not a good plan.

Closing:
I am hopeful that the emotions of the weekend and playing the first games at the Diamond of all Diamonds at Love's Field do not get int he way this weekend. i think their may be a few emotions and moments to not forget this weekend. Playing in front of 4,000 fans, the Boomer Sooners from the crowd, the cheers of approval for a HR and all those claps with two strikes before a Sooner picks up a strikeout in the circle. I think these girls have looked longingly towards this weekend the last year, maybe longer. I hope they take it in stride and just play softball as only they can.

Boomer Sooner!