OU Texas Weekend---It's All on the Line Now!!

[TropicalSooner]

OU - Texas: The Red River Shootout.

Oh my. Where to start?

First of all, I think that the version of Texas that went to Stillwater will NOT be the version that will take the field against the Sooners on their home field down in Austin. In spite of the errors that tejas seems to continue to struggle with, Mike White does instill pride in the team, and they all seem to be eager to go to battle for him. They are still smarting from the embarrassment in Stillwater, and I believe they will come out swinging when the teams take the field in Austin. The Sooners better be ready for a Dogfight when they show up.

Although it was not particularly on display last weekend, Texas does have a powerful offense. We have not played a power offense in several weeks now, at least back to Tech in mid-march and then ULL and Miami, OH before that. I'm already mentally accepting we will see HRs hit off May, Deal, and Maxwell. My hope is that they will be singletons and not with the bases full of other shorthorn players. What may make a difference in that scenario however is ball placement. They seem to be fairly adept at successfully going after balls up in the zone. OSU didn't give them very much to swing at in that respect however. Look at the outs for the three games at Stillwater:

Game---Pitcher--------IP----FO---GO---SO---BB---HBP---NP
One-----Kilfoyl--------7.0----3-----10----7-----1-----0-----122
Two-----Aycock-------2.0-----1------3----1-----4-----0------32
Two-----Rosenberry--5.0-----2-----11---1-----1-----0------80
Three---Kilfoyl-------7.0-----5-----10----4----1-----0------96

Also interesting to note---very very few free bases were given up by the Cowgirl pitchers-except for Aycock.
The net result of their careful pitching was giving up only 2 runs in 21 innings against the number two team in the country. (Also to their credit, the Cowgirls uncharacteristically had 0 fielding errors for all three games.)

On another site, a friendly texas fan we were chatting with made this observation (talking about the upcoming series with OU) :
" After our performance against OSU, I’m not too optimistic. I feel like the middle is fooled with a drop right now.
So is the rest of the lineup but the middle was definitely stymied "

I feel like if we pay attention to this very recent past, then we may have a road map for how to challenge the shorthorns this weekend, at least from our pitching side.
Of course, how we wind up pitching to them will be reliant on the strike zone and where the umpire decides he wants it to be--and we ain't the home team this time.

Here is a look at the LIneup generally used for the OSU series together with a few season stats on their starters:

Name--------POS---CL---Bats------BA-----2B----HR----RBI----BB-----SO-----SB-ATT

Henry---------CF----Fr-----L-------.404----8------6------22-----9-----16------17-20
Scott----------3B----Jr-----L-------.393----5------2------25-----20-----4--------4-5
Mitchell------DP-----Sr----R-------.450----9------5------23-----18-----9-------11-12
Atwood-------C-----So-----R-------.400---7------12-----52------8-----11-------0-1

Martinez-----SS----So------L------.315----3-------2------19-----5------13------2-2
Washington--2B----Sr-----R-------.333----6-------6------24-----6------8-------4-5
Stewart------!B----Fr------R------.354----5-------5------24-----20-----19------3-3

Maloney-----RF---RSo-----L------.424-----1------0-------7------8-------5-------6-8
Dayton------LF-----Sr-----L-------.385-----3------0------11----19-------8-------8-8

The top and bottom parts of the lineup stayed fixed throughout the OSU series. The middle section order juggled within that group a bit. Sometimes they traded off positions when they took the field. But generally that was the set order when they came to bat.
As you can see, they are very good at getting on base and they will be aggressive and fast when they get there.

May, Maxwell, and Monticelli have pitched to almost all the sophomores and higher except for the xfr Mitchell. And initially I had overlooked Keeney having faced Texas back in 2020 as OUBeliever has pointed out. But in looking back over that scoresheet and roster, none of the players on that 2020 Texas team are still around, so for all the players Keeney may face this time, none have batted against her before.

For the Sooners--
The Texas pitching staff: Czech (Sr), Morgan (Jr), Simpson (Jr), Gutierrez (So) we are all familiar with. Only the freshman Kavan will be new to us. Hopefully one time through the lineup and we'll be able to figure her out. Being in front of a supportive home crowd will be a big help to Kavan, but if we are patient at the plate and make her throw strikes, we should be able to have some success. While Coach White has a history this season of pitching Kavan first in a three game series, I don't know if he will do that with the Sooners. Kavan, Gutierrez and Morgan seem to be who Coach White has settled on for his starting rotations. Simpson seems to have found success in coming in as a closer. While Kavan has generally been game one starter recently, my thinking is that they will go with the more experienced Gutierrez to try to get that first game win.

For us, I do expect Maxwell for game one, May for two, and Deal for three. Keeney will probably see some work, and Monticelli may as well. But if we are having good success with our starting pitcher, I hope we are not in a rush to take her out. Last year, May had 8 K's in almost a complete game, and Maxwell had 9 K's in a complete game losing effort for the Cowgirls. If our pitching staff gets hot and start serving up longhorn steaks....then leave 'em alone and let 'em cook!