OU Drops Washington, Eyes Friday Meeting With Cal

OKLAHOMA CITY -- The Oklahoma softball team continued what it started in Tucson, Ariz., last weekend.

This time it was eighth-seeded Washington (40-18) who fell victim to the streaking Sooners (45-20-1) by a score of 6-2 on Thursday evening in both team's opener at the Women College World Series in Oklahoma City.

With the win in front of a sellout crowd (6,119) at Hall of Fame Stadium, OU advances to play California (51-11) on Friday at 6 p.m. OU has a 3-9 all-time record against Cal, which includes a 5-2 elimination loss to the Bears in last season's WCWS.

The game will be broadcast on ESPN2 with Beth Mowins on play-by-play and Michelle Smith on color commentary. Fans can also listen to a live internet radio broadcast through the Yahoo! Oklahoma sports package. Brian Brinkely will be pulling the one-man show on the audio broadcast.

The Sooners have outscored opponents 22-4 in the first four innings of their last three wins (Arizona and Louisiana-Lafayette included). Thursday, OU won it's WCWS opener for the first time since 2000, when the program's won its only National Championship.

Box Score | Photo Gallery | 2004 WCWS Central

Washington began the scoring with one run in the first inning. The score came on a Dena Tyson run-scoring single. Tyson drove in the Huskies' only run when they eliminated OU from the 2004 Kia Klassic with a 1-0 win on March 20.

Oklahoma wasted no time in answering Washington. The response was a four-run first inning that freshman leadoff hitter Norrelle Dickson began with a single. Then UW shortstop Amanda Oleson booted consecutive grounders from Kristin Vesely and Heather Scaglione. With no outs the bases were chalked full of runners for OU's hottest hitter, Christina Enea.

Enea hit a seeing-eye single to right field that plated Dickson and tied the score. Jessica Leslie and Mariee Mena followed with run-scoring singles of their own as the Sooners quickly jumped out to a 4-1 lead.

OU has scored 10 runs on 10 hits in the first inning of the last two games. Gasso's squad dropped six runs and six hits on Louisiana-Lafayette as they cruised to a 15-0 win in the Region 1 Championship in Tucson, Ariz.

Oleson cut the Husky deficit down to two runs with a slap single to score sophomore Aimee Minor in the third inning.

The game moved along quickly until the bottom of the sixth inning when OU scored a pair of runs with two outs. Vesely drove in Jade Prather (pinch runner for Keiter) and Dickson with a double to left-center. It was a dramatic turn-around for Vesely, who was receiving fluids in the hospital yesterday because she was dehydrated from the flu.

It looked like Vesely was going to score on Christina Enea's third single of the game but she was gunned down at home plate by UW center fielder Rita Roach.

Enea has hit .600 (12-for-20) since the start of the NCAA Regionals, a span of six games. During her current seven-game hit streak she has driven in six runs, which included four in the Tucson regional championship game against Lafayette. As a team OU is hitting .352 since the start of regionals.

Keiter was somewhat of a forgotten factor in the circle due to the Sooners offensive outburst. The junior hurler tossed her 29th complete game of the year and improved to 22-13 on the season. Keiter has been the pitcher of record in all 10 of OU's postseason games (including Big 12 Tournament) and has won seven of those contests.

Notes:
Oklahoma and Washington met for the 10th time today and the Sooners tied the series at 5-5. Today marked the second time the two have met at the WCWS (the Huskies defeated the Sooners 3-1 last year).

Appearing in its fifth straight WCWS, Oklahoma improved to 6-6 in the event. The Sooners earned just their second victory since they won the national championship in 2000 (their WCWS debut). The only other year that OU opened the WCWS with a victory was in 2000.

UW, making its seventh appearance in the WCWS, is now 13-11 lifetime at the Series. The loss was the Huskies' first in opening-day WCWS play (they are now 6-1).

Washington lost for just the fourth time this season when scoring the game's initial run. The Huskies are now 27-4 when scoring first.

Oklahoma junior Christina Enea extended her hitting streak to seven games with an RBI single in the bottom of the first inning. So far in NCAA postseason play this year Enea is batting .600 (12-for-20) with six RBI in six contests.

Washington senior Amanda Oleson went 2-for-4 in the game and has now hit safely in seven of the last eight contests.

In its last two games (regional championship and today), OU has put up a combined 10 runs and 10 hits in the first inning (four hits and four runs today).

With two errors today, the Huskies have committed six errors in the past four games.

Washington freshman Dominque Lastrapes has now reached base safely in nine straight games with a sixth-inning single today. She has 18 base hits in those nine games.

Oklahoma sophomore Kristen Vesely's two-RBI double in the bottom of the sixth was the first extra base hit of the game. The two runs driven in give her three this postseason and four in her career NCAA postseason career.

When Oklahoma junior Heather Scaglione drew a base on balls in bottom of the sixth inning she moved into a tie for first place (Casey Dickson in 1997) on OU's single-season walks list with 41.

Quotes:
OKLAHOMA HEAD COACH PATTY GASSO
General comment:
“The first game is always the toughest, without question, and we always have nerves and are very nervy going in. Sometimes it's a little bit tougher being the home team because you have to go out with the pitcher out on the mound, and when you're nervy that's not exactly a good way to start. We like to start on offense. Regardless of whatever happens early in the game I knew these guys would step up and Kami (Keiter) would come back and go out there. But coming out and attacking from the start and giving our pitcher room to breathe and room to settle in was outstanding. This team is doing real well offensively. They're an opposing offense. Down the line they're a tough, tough Washington team, and we knew that we needed to score a lot of runs in order to give us a chance to win.”

On the crowd:
“The crowd was fantastic. I've never experienced something that loud and that many people. It was really an inspiration to us to keep going.”

OKLAHOMA JUNIOR KAMI KEITER
On pitching with run support:
“It's definitely a lot easier and a lot more relaxing. Knowing that we're the home team, just getting out of the first inning is my biggest thing because I know my team is going to come up and score runs. We're just fun to watch right now and that makes me able to relax and be confident on the mound, because I know no matter what happens my defense is going to back me up and the offense is going to score runs.”

On her pitching against Washington:
“Once I got settled in I felt a lot better. I was struggling and letting too many things affect me in the first inning. I took a deep breath and relied more on my defense rather than trying to do it all on my own. April Valdez made an amazing play. Everybody is going to play off the defense no matter what, so I just relaxed and knew that my defense had my back.”

OKLAHOMA SOPHOMORE KRISTIN VESELY
On Oklahoma's offensive turnaround:
“It starts off with Norrelle (Dickson). She's a very good leadoff (hitter). We just try to move her and push her across, to support Kami (Keiter) and let her get settled in.”

OKLAHOMA JUNIOR CHRISTINA ENEA
On Oklahoma's offensive turnaround:
“Our eyes get real big, I think, when it matters the most. The regional and the World Series are the two most important weekends of our season, and I think everyone realizes that and we all just stepped up. This is by far the best offense I've seen all year long, and everyone contributes in this lineup. You can count on anybody to come through and I think that's what happened in this game. Everyone was clutch; it was great for the team.”

WASHINGTON CO-HEAD COACH SCOTT CENTALA
General comment:
“I think the first inning really set the tone for the game. It put us in a little bit of a hole. We contributed a lot in putting ourselves in a hole the first inning by not playing good defense. You don't come this far at this level without playing good defense. I thought our pitcher, Ashley Boek, threw the ball really well. In the end, we put ourselves in an early hole and that was hard to overcome.”

WASHINGTON CO-HEAD COACH STEVE DAILEY
General Comment:
“The first inning put us in a hole. The girls battled and fought hard to try and get back into the game. Offensively, I thought we did a pretty good job of creating opportunities for ourselves to score. A couple of hits here and there and we might have been able to push across a few more runs. It was hard to overcome four runs when we had three opportunities to close out the first inning. I know our girls gave it a great try.”

OU Drops Washington, Eyes Friday Meeting With Cal

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