No. 1 Oklahoma (28-0, 1-0 Big 12) run-ruled Baylor (17-11, 0-1 Big 12) 9-1 in five innings in its first Big 12 game of the season in Norman on Friday.
Oklahoma has now defeated the Bears twice this season, with its first win coming on March 10 in the Rainbow Wahine Classic in Honolulu.
Freshman pitcher Jordy Bahl earned the start for the Sooners, pitching five innings with eight strikeouts while allowing one run on two hits.
Sophomore infielder Tiare Jennings went 1-for-2 at the plate with a grand slam.
Alongside Jennings, redshirt senior utility Jocelyn Alo and redshirt senior catcher Lynnsie Elam each hit home runs. Since the start of the Hall of Fame Classic on March 18, Alo and Elam have combined for 14 home runs over the past six games.
Here are three takeaways from the Sooners' first conference win:
Bahl keeps Bahling
After the Sooners finished Friday’s win, Bahl trotted to the locker room to discuss her outing with Patty Gasso.
Once the freshman pitcher approached the Sooners’ head coach, Gasso asked the right-handed pitcher to measure her performance on a scale from 1-10. Bahl, with no hesitation, rated her second career start at Marita Hynes Field as a six, which was on par with Gasso and pitching coach Jennifer Rocha’s evaluation.
Bahl’s outing on Friday was even more impressive given she was coming off pitching six innings in Oklahoma’s 9-1 run rule win over No. 8 Kentucky on Tuesday. In that game, the Papillion, Nebraska native garnered 12 strikeouts, which is just her third highest single-game total this season.
After giving up a run during the first inning on a wild pitch, which was Baylor’s only score of the contest, Bahl responded by pitching four-straight scoreless innings and forcing six ground outs, one of which ended the game.
“It’s just her competitive spirit,” Gasso said of Bahl's response to early game adversity. “The expectation for Jordy is for her to always be a 10. But, when she’s not a 10, she gets a little bit frustrated with herself. Today we felt a little bit of that. (There were) more balls out of the zone than normal, but that could also be the leftover feelings of her game at Kentucky.”
Only a freshman, Bahl has quickly become Oklahoma’s go-to pitcher in a rotation of sophomore Nicole May and redshirt senior Hope Trautwein. After the win against Baylor, Bahl now has 116 strikeouts, while she has allowed just 29 hits and 11 runs on the season. The right-hander also boasts the 10th-lowest earned-runs average in the nation with a 0.80.
Despite pitching the most innings for OU this season, Gasso noted that Bahl’s role will grow as the stakes of conference play escalates.
“To us in conference play, it's win it all costs,” Gasso said. “Will Jordy start tomorrow? No she won’t. She understands her role is amplified, but I think that our other two could do the same thing. So if Jordy needed relief, Hope Trautwein could come in and get it done. So, this is definitely not just the Jordy Bahl staff.”
Sooners finding balance
Gasso feels like her team might be the most balanced it has ever been.
This season, Oklahoma has outscored its opponents 268-24, with 23 of its 27 wins coming in a run-rule fashion. As a team, the Sooners are atop the national ranks in batting average (.390), earned run average (0.73) and have blasted the most home runs (73).
“They’re absolutely balanced throughout,” Gasso said. “We have a top-notch pitching staff, an offense that is extremely explosive and a defense that's very athletic. So we have all cylinders. When we have all cylinders working, that is something to watch. We're still working to find those cylinders hitting all at the same time. So I think that's the difference.”
Jennings, who played on a Women’s College World Series championship team last season, believes having a staff of Bahl, Trautwein and May has helped ease the pressure on the Sooners offensively. This season, the sophomore infielder has accumulated a .403 batting average, launched the second most home runs on the team with 11 and produced 32 RBIs.
OU's defense has been so dominant this season that its first, first-inning run of the season in 27 games versus the Bears.
“I think it's comforting knowing that they want to be better for us, and we want to be better for them,” Jennings said of OU’s defense. “So, it's really nice how they just go out there and dominate, and then at the end of the game you hear them out, and (they think) that wasn't good enough, but that's pretty good.”
Jennings back on track
Jennings knew exactly what she wanted to do when the bases were loaded.
Landing two pitches outside the strike zone, Baylor pitcher Maren Judsich changed her strategy. Speeding into her windup, Judsich dared float an off-speed pitch into the strike zone hoping to get an out t. Instead, Jennings loaded up and slugged the ball deep to right field for a grand slam during the third inning.
Jennings' grand slam opened the floodgates in Oklahoma’s win, giving the Sooners an 8-1 lead and putting them just one run away from a run-rule.
“I think during that at-bat I just wanted to do whatever I could to get them home,” Jennings said. “Like the coach said, we don't like producing too many runs with runners in scoring position. So whatever I could do to score them, (I wanted to do) no matter how it was.”
After knocking nine home runs in the first 13 games of the season, which was leading Oklahoma’s lineup at that point, Jennings had only blasted one in her last 12 games. On Friday, Jennings' grand slam was a sign she’s back on track offensively.
The Sooners return to action for their second matchup of the series against the Bears at 1 p.m. on Saturday.
