Shoot-out at the Sooner Corral -- Are we ready for them? Are they ready for us?

[TropicalSooner]

Well folks...here we are. The post-season realistically starts now. We start playing for all the marbles--every game, here on out.
How do we match up against the Cowgirls?? A quick scan at just a few stats give us a general idea: Records--OU 45-1, OSU 38-9. OU team BA .381 OSU BA .299. Runs Scored: OU 437 OSU 265. Times Struck out: OU 114 OSU 217. HR: OU 120 OSU 61. Soooo.......walk in the park? Nah!

As in all the other sporting Bedlam matchups this too is even up. Here's what I think:

Poke State had just a horrendous start to the season. They were counting on Miranda Elish to give them the ace that they lost when Carrie Eberle graduated. And they had other key players back that they thought would give their offense a boost. Plus Redshirt Junior Kelly Maxwell was starting to come along nicely, and they added another (although unproven) piece in Grad Transfer Morgan Day. What they found out at the beginning of the season was they ran into a buzz saw at the St Pete Clearwater tournament taking three losses and then two more over the next two weeks. Suddenly only midway through March they had 6 losses. Elish wasn't her old self. After sitting out last year, she had too much rust to pick up where she had left off. But Kenny G knew it would take some time so he kept putting her in and pitching her over and over, and now towards the end of the season she is in every bit as good a form as ever. Maxwell has matured as well, and now towards the end of the season is probably close to as good as Eberle was last year. And Day has become the surprise package. As the pokes have grinded through the season, these three have become a very strong pitching trio. OSU's offense while not overly robust does have 6 starters and 1 bench players hitting over .300. They seem to score just enough runs to let their pitching staff otherwise control the game to get their wins. Defense, while some games leave you scratching your head, have only made 22 team errors on the season, and OU has made 28. Probably the errors that were made were at the worst possible time and cost the game like Florida State game one. Kelly Maxwell was not happy about that outcome.

We know what the Sooners have. We've seen it all year. Our Pitching has been very surprising in the best way possible. Our offense has continued the pace we established last year. And our Defense, while not as sharp as last year, has really improved as we have gotten closer to post season.

So why am I so unsettled about the upcoming shoot-out?

I think as a rabid Sooner fan, I had gotten accustomed to our team coming out of the gates with an explosive offense early and often and racking up comfortable leads that our pitching staff could just go do their thing and notch the wins. It's just when I start to think about the feel of the game that I get uncomfortable. It's now taking us several innings to get our first runs on the board--against lesser teams: Baylor....UAB....even game 3 with Kansas. We can't do this against OSU. I hope our pitchers come out with "hair on fire" attitude. We have been pitching well--but I don't think great-- just not the 10-15 strike outs/game we were getting earlier. Now its 6,7, 2, 3/game. The one thing we still do well is pitch so we get a lot of ground outs. Now that our defense is coming back that is a good thing. Better to just strike them out.

So what do you think? Are we ready for them?
Yup.
Are they ready for us?
Yup. Just take a look at their last two games against #4 FSU: Kelly Maxwell threw 9 innings w 12 K's and lost the game on errors made by the defense in the 9th inning. Morgan Day threw a 2 hitter with 6 Ks complete game (both hits were HRs). If you took those two mistakes out, she was only 1 walk away from a perfect game. It doesn't matter whether an "injured" Elish plays or not. You can be sure that when the Cowgirls show up at Marita Hynes, they will have both barrels loaded

[ousbfan]

The main things that strike me as different from last year are the errors, which have caught me by surprise ( Lyons's throwing errors ) which I'll bet PG would say it's just a focus thing. I've watched some of osu games and OU better be locked in totally for this series. Maxwell is the total package this year and she paints her pitches on the money most of the time. Elish is not impressive from the games later this season that I've seen, but she can be a dangerous hitter. Day is off and on in the games I've seen but when she's on she's good. During the FSU series it was said that the best 2 defensive teams were playing.

The errors and the consistent gap hitting are the big difference from what we're use to seeing from the girls. Also Hansen's bat just hasn't recovered since her missing 10 games with the knee injury. Too many games this year we've scored alot of runs seems like on other teams errors and walks and free bases. Unless osu falls apart the girls have to get back to the focus and consistently passing the bat with alot of earned runs.

I think osu will be coming to play hard and I bet little kenny has really worked them hard at all things of the game this past week or so because he really wants his big boy pants