No. 2 Oklahoma (48-7) and No. 15 Alabama (40-21) are set to face off in the program’s 18th all-time meeting in the Norman Super Regional on Friday.

The Sooners and Crimson Tide have faced off 17 times since 2006, with eight of those in the Women’s College World Series. Alabama leads the series 10-7, with all 17 meetings featuring Oklahoma’s head coach Patty Gasso and Alabama’s Patrick Murphy.

“I’ve known Pat Murphy for quite a while, a long, long time actually,” Gasso said. “He is really, really good at getting his team ready to play … They’re fast, they’re aggressive, they have a good staff, and he mixes them up really good, so you’ve got to be ready to flip your script quickly as to who he brings in.”

The program’s first postseason matchup came in the 2012 Women’s College World Series Championship, where Alabama beat OU 5-4 in game three for its first national championship in program history.

The win-or-go-home mentality is nothing new for the two programs, as they’ve faced off in elimination games in the past.

“I think of big moments where either you’re knocking us out, or we’re knocking you out,” Gasso said. “We’ve both kind of have done that, whether it's a Super Regional or the World Series. We’ve had that kind of back-and-forth with each other … They’re coming in for their lives, as we are, so it’s going to be a classic matchup.”

OU dropped two of three regular-season games to Alabama earlier in the year, struggling on both sides of the ball in the losses. However, the Sooners finished strong following the series loss, going 7-2 to close the regular season.

“I think the biggest thing that we took away from that last series was, like she said, the crowd,” redshirt freshman Nelly McEnroe-Marinas said. “I feel like we’ve kind of learned to embrace it, and just think like we’re playing, and they’re watching, and that’s all it really is … Just not making the moment too big and not making this game bigger than it is.”

The four-time defending national champion Sooners, coming off a dominant performance in the Norman Regional, will look to keep things rolling in a best-of-three game Super Regional series, with a trip to Oklahoma City on the line against a familiar foe, starting 4 p.m. Friday on ESPN2.

This story was edited by Parker Coyne.

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