Sooner slugger
OU softball star Jocelyn Alo keeps getting better in the postseason.
— To understand how extraordinary Jocelyn Alo is, you need only freeze-frame her latest home run.
It came Saturday in the second game of Oklahoma’s super regional against Arkansas. The Razorback pitcher had an advantage with a twoballs, two-strikes count, and her next offering was good. Outside corner. Low. Extremely tough to hit.
Except that Alo did. She had to bend her knees way down, even dropping her back knee so far that her shin was parallel with the dirt, but when her bat smashed into the ball, a freezeframe of impact showed that everything was perfect. Her hands were through the ball. Her arms were extended. Her head was down.
Darned if the ball didn’t end up four rows deep beyond the outfield fence.
No one should’ve have been able to hit that pitch that far, but the Sooner slugger did.
“It’s extremely, extremely impressive,” Oklahoma ace Paige Parker said of a season in which Alo has a nation’s best 28 homers. “It’s extremely difficult to pitch to her. There’s really not a whole lot of weakness there at all.”
One of the few remaining questions about Alo was how the freshman from Hauula, Hawaii, a suburb of Honolulu, would handle the pressure of postseason, but she’s done to it what she’s done with so many softballs — smashed it.
On the day the National Freshman of the Year award will be announced, it seems difficult to believe it will be anyone other than Alo. She is a superstar on a team of superstars. OU has some of the biggest names in the sport. Paige Parker. Paige Lowary. Shay Knighten. Sydney Romero. None is more astounding than Alo.
Even as the games have gotten bigger, the stakes higher and the pitchers better, she has actually improved upon her torrid homerun pace. During the regular season, she hit .46 homers per game. During the postseason, she’s improved that to .63.
What’s more, she’s been best in NCAA Tournament games — .80 homers per game.
In five tourney games, she’s hit four out of the park.
Roll those numbers around in your head a bit. Four homers in five NCAA tourney games. Two in the regional. Two in the super regional. That’s an outrageous pace in any five-game span, but in the biggest games of the season, including several that were must-win situations for the Sooners’ opponents? It’s difficult to properly express just how impressive such numbers are.
Remember, Alo (pronounced AH-low) isn’t some unknown freshman flying under the radar. All of these opponents have a season’s worth of video on her. They know how dangerous she can be. They can see the evidence with their own eyes.
And still, she is getting pitches that she can hit out of the park.
In fairness to the pitchers and their coaches, though, she has launched some pitches that had no business hitting much less launching over the fence. Much like that homer Saturday against Arkansas, Alo hit one against Tulsa in the regional that was high and inside. It was a great pitch because in a spot like that, power hitters have a tough time getting their arms extended and their weight transferred.
Making contact is possible.
Really driving the ball is tough.
But Alo didn’t just hit it out of the park. She crushed it over the leftfield bleachers.
“Great pitcher’s pitches,” Parker said, “she can hit those out.”
Parker, who has studied hundreds of hitters during her career, believes Alo’s prowess stems mainly from her strength and her adjustments.
Alo is 5-foot-8, and even though softball teams don’t often list the weights of players, she wrestled in high school. She won a Hawaii state title in the 184-pound weight class as a junior, and looking at video of that match, she looks similar to where she is today.
Regardless of an exact number, Alo is stout.
Broad shoulders. Muscular arms. Powerful legs.
That strength pairs with a keen ability to adjust to where pitches are thrown. No matter if the ball is high and inside or low and outside or somewhere in between, she gets herself and her bat in the proper position at the point of contact.
No doubt she is helped by the fact she is surrounded by a bunch of other talented hitters — hard to pitch around her or intentionally walk her all the time — but that firepower doesn’t help her when she’s standing at the plate. She has to have the ability to drive really difficult pitches out of the park.
She’s so technically superior that a high school baseball coach in the metro area recently told me that he hopes to use video of her swing to teach his players. He did a slow-motion study of her swing recently.
“And she is perfect,” he said, adding that the power she generates with her lower body and the quickness she displays in her hands is awesome.
But if you go to Hall of Fame Stadium or simply watch from home this week during the Women’s College World Series, don’t fixate on the details with Jocelyn Alo. She’ll take care of those.
Instead, sit back and enjoy. Talent like hers is exceedingly rare, but more than that, it is incredibly fun. It is electric. Dynamic. Towering.
Just like her home runs.
Jenni Carlson: Jenni can be reached at 405-475-4125 or jcarlson@oklahoman.com. Like her at facebook.com/ JenniCarlsonOK, follow her at twitter.com/jennicarlson_ok or view her personality page at newsok.com/jennicarlson.