Mendes' Triple Sends OU to Winners' Bracket

⁸Alabama

¹Oklahoma

Box Score

Highlights

Photos

Inning-by-Inning
Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	R	H	E
UA	0	0	1	0	1	0	0	2	4	0
OU	1	0	1	0	0	1	X	3	6	1

Pitching
	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO
W - Juarez (27-1)	7.0	4	2	2	3	9
L - Fouts (19-6)	6.0	6	3	3	2	5

Individual Leaders
	AB	R	H	RBI	BB	HR
UA - Jenkins	3	2	2	1	0	1
OU - Romero	3	2	2	0	0	0

NORMAN – With a swing of the bat in the bottom of the sixth inning Thursday night, Oklahoma junior Nicole Mendes created Bedlam at the Women's College World Series.

Mendes' triple off the center-field wall, which was just inches away from leaving the yard, knocked in the go-ahead run for a 3-2 victory over No. 8-seeded Alabama before a sellout crowd of 9,290 (a Session 2 record) at USA Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma City.

“I didn't know it would hit the wall,” the left-handed hitting Mendes said of her line drive that was tailing away from Crimson Tide centerfielder Elissa Brown. “I just knew it was over her head and as soon as I saw it over her head, I was going to go, so I stopped looking after that. It wasn't until afterward that I saw how close it was to going out.”

As a result, the top-ranked, top-seeded Sooners (55-3) now face No. 13-seeded Oklahoma State (45-15) at 8:30 p.m. Friday.

The Cowgirls set the stage for potential Bedlam with a 2-1 victory over No. 5-seeded Florida (49-17) in the game prior to OU's nightcap.

“OSU's a great team,” said OU senior and National Player of the Year finalist Sydney Romero, who went 2-for-3 at the plate and scored two runs. “The cool part about it is you have two Oklahoma teams playing in the World Series. The fact both these teams are from Oklahoma, I just think says a lot of stuff. And it's awesome. We know it's going to be a great game.”

The Sooners have won 23 straight and 26 of their last 27 meetings against OSU. OU swept this year's three-game series by a combined score of 16-2. For the last three seasons, the Big 12 regular-season championship was at stake when the Bedlam series was played.

Friday's Bedlam winner will not play again until Sunday at 2:30 p.m., while the loser will play Saturday at 6 p.m.

“The Big 12 has really progressed over the years and this is a testimony to that,” Mendes said. “I'm excited because they're always a tough game.”

OU coach Patty Gasso said she noticed how calm her team seemed to be despite not playing until 8:45 p.m.

“Normally you have athletes that are very nervous. They weren't,' ” Gasso said. “They were just really excited to get going. You sit around all day, it's hard to do that. You're watching other teams play. They were very anxious, but yet very calm in that way.

“The word they kept using was 'fun.' ... (I told them) 'The F in fun is Free of worry, Free of stress, Free of pressure. So they took that and they bought into it. The U in fun is Use self-control, don't get in your own head. They understood that. And the N was the Not about me. It's not about me. They bought into it. They loved it. They embraced it. From there, they just get crazy confident in the fact that they're very powerful together as one unit. It just kind of comes that way to them. They just really embrace it.”

Romero said, “We always talk about pressure being privilege. Just the fact we're here and we're in this situation, you have to own it. You have to have so much fun, so I'm not going to regret any moment.”

Romero led off the bottom of the first inning with a bloop single to right. Fale Aviu followed with a single to left, advancing Romero to third. Romero then scored on Caleigh Clifton's sacrifice fly to center to give the Sooners a 1-0.

After the Crimson Tide (57-9) tied the score in the top of the third inning, OU took a 2-1 lead in the bottom half of the inning when Romero led off with a triple and scored on Jocelyn Alo's single up the middle.

Alabama tied the score at 2 in the top of the fifth on a solo home run from junior shortstop Claire Jenkins.

Then came Mendes' heroics in OU's final at-bat.

Mendes is no stranger to thriving on softball's biggest stage. As a freshman, she homered in both games of the championship series victory over Florida.

“I like to compete,” Mendes said. “This is where the biggest teams come to compete. I don't know, it just brings something out in me. I just get really excited and really amped up. It's anybody's game. Any team here can win it. I think that kind of lights a fire in me.”

Junior left-hander Giselle Juarez went the distance for the Sooners, scattering four hits and striking out nine while throwing 97 pitches.

“I think I felt calm,” said Juarez, a transfer from Arizona State who faced the Sooners in last year's WCWS. “I knew my team had my back.”