Rain wreaks havoc on Bedlam baseball
Oklahoma and North Dakota State got part of the first inning played Friday — and then the rain came.
With storms continuously rolling through Norman, the Oklahoma softball team’s opening game in the NCAA Tournament was officially suspended just before 8:30 p.m. on Friday. It will resume Saturday at 1:30 p.m. with North Dakota State leading the defending national champion 2-0 in the bottom of the first inning.
“The idea is to reset and start over,” coach Patty
Gasso said in a release. “This team knows how to do that, so maybe this break will work for us. We’ve been in these situations; it seems like every year something trips us up in the way of staying on schedule. It’s not something that’s uncommon, and whatever cards are dealt we just have to play.”
Session 1 tickets will be honored for the first game on Saturday, and second session tickets will be needed for the second two games of the day.
The winner of that game will play Tulsa at 5:30 p.m., while the loser will take on Arkansas at 8.
After less than 20 minutes on the field, Oklahoma’s game against North Dakota State was halted just before 4:30 p.m. due to lightning in the area. The game, which started at 4:11, was already delayed due to earlier weather in the area.
Though this regional was touted to have top pitching, the weather appears to have affected the pitching staffs on the first day with Tulsa’s Emily Watson, the AAC Pitcher of the Year, giving up four runs on six hits in the win against Arkansas. In the short time OU was on the field, Big 12 Pitcher of the Year, Oklahoma’s Paige
Parker, gave up a two-run homer in the top of the first inning.
First pitch for Tulsa and Arkansas was pushed back an hour to about 12:30 p.m. as both teams waited out unpredictable spring storms. Tulsa coach John
Bargfeldt theorized it might have impacted the pitching matchup. Arkansas’ Autumn
Storms and Tulsa’s Watson entered the day with a combined ERA of 3.1 — a mark they exceeded by the end of the second inning.
“It’s really tough,” Bargfeldt said. “Their routine was completely disrupted, as you see, they give up three runs and two runs in the second inning. Then they settled down a little bit.”
The start for Oklahoma and North Dakota State was delayed by more than two hours. NDSU went ahead in the top of the first with a two-run homer from first baseman Vanessa Anderson.
Play abruptly stopped as the Sooners went up to bat, though, with yet another storm system in the area.
Walkoff-homer leads Tulsa past Arkansas
As soon as the ball connected with Haley Meinen’s bat, she knew.
Tulsa’s starting right fielder didn’t wait to see the ball disappear over the back wall at Marita Hynes Field before she took off, tearing through the base path as rain fell and wind ripped through the stadium.
“I’ve never run the bases so fast in my whole entire life,” she said afterward. “I was just hoping that it would land, and I’d get on base for the next person.”
By the time Meinen reached home plate, the scoreboard updated: Tulsa 5, Arkansas 4.
Meinen just needed one pitch in the bottom of the seventh to make good contact, and the wind helped lift the ball just beyond the Razorbacks’ reach.
“I thought it was gone,” Bargfeldt said. “The wind was blowing so hard, you knew. That was my concern after we took the lead entering the sixth, somebody just had to hit a fairly deep fly ball, and it was going to go out.”
Watson, Tulsa’s ace, pitched a complete game, but gave up six hits and four runs to go with four strikeouts. The Golden Hurricane advance to the winners bracket with a game at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, while Arkansas will play at 4 p.m. Saturday.
Quotable
Arkansas coach Courtney
Deifel on facing elimination in the losers bracket: “I think we’ve been tested quite a bit throughout our conference schedule in kind of taking your hits on a Friday night and coming back out ready to battle on Saturday. We’ve done that consistently and they know what’s at stake.”