One of the best college softball teams in history made it back to back national titles on Thursday night. The #1 Oklahoma Sooners defeated the Texas Longhorns 10-5 at the USA Softball Hall of Fame Complex in Oklahoma City to win the best of three NCAA Division I College World Series Championship in two games.
Texas (47-22-1), who needed the win to force a decisive third game after a 16-1 rout by Oklahoma on Wednesday, got off to a fast start. Alyssa Washington and Mary Iakopo both provided RBI sacrifice fly outs in the bottom of the first inning to make it 2-0 Longhorns. The Sooners tied it in the fourth when Kinzie Hansen reached on an error that scored Alyssa Brito unearned, and Taylon Snow followed with a single to drive in Hansen. Oklahoma (59-3) took control in the fifth when Brito hit an RBI double, and Hansen hit a long three-run homerun to left for a 6-2 lead. They added to that in the sixth with four more runs, including a three-run homer by Grace Lyons. Mia Scott finished the scoring on the night in the last at bat for Texas with a three-run homerun with two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning. The national title is the sixth in school history for the Sooners, and their third in the last six seasons.
Texas had advanced to the World Series by playing spoiler defeating #11 Washington in the Regionals in three games, #4 Arkansas in three games in the Super Regionals, and then advanced to the Championship Series by bouncing back after losing their second game to Oklahoma to defeat Arizona and #6 Oklahoma State twice for the right to face the Sooners again. Estelle Czech (13-2) would take the loss in the circle for the Longhorns, while Scott and JJ Smith had two hits a piece. Hansen, Brito, and Snow had two hits each for Oklahoma and Jordy Bahl (22-1) got the pitching win. The Sooners, who were the #1 team in the country the entire season, had 38 run-rule victories in 2022 and had a combined record of 115-7 between this year and 2021 (56-4) in capturing the back to back titles.
