OU vs. Texas softball: Sooners beat Longhorns, set NCAA attendance record for regular-season game

Friday’s OU-Texas showdown at USA Softball Hall of Fame Stadium had (almost) all the feelings of a Women’s College World Series game.

Traffic along 50th Street was at a standstill.

Fans poured into the complex to fill USA Softball Hall of Fame Stadium.

The Sooners winning.

About the only things missing were the temporary bleachers beyond the temporary outfield fence and the covering on that temporary wall.

Back-to-back no-doubt home runs from Tiare Jennings and Haley Lee in the second inning powered the top-ranked Sooners to an 8-1 victory over the Longhorns in front of an NCAA-record regular-season crowd of 8,930.

The previous NCAA record for attendance at a regular-season softball game was 5,724, set by Fresno State in a 2000 doubleheader against Arizona.

Here are four takeaways from the Sooners’ win.

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Texas coach Mike White hears it from Sooners fans

In pregame introductions, Texas coach Mike White was booed heartily by OU fans.

Every time White emerged from the dugout during the game, he was hit with another shower of boos.

Discuss a call with the umpires?

More boos.

Any Longhorns coach is automatically an object of Sooners’ fans’ derision, but White’s comments this week made him even more of a target.

“They find ways to keep reloading and I’m not quite sure all of it us, uh, whatever,” White said in a video that was posted to Twitter by an Austin television station. “I’m not going to say anymore.”

White said after the game that his comments were misconstrued, coming near the end of an interview that lasted 15-20 minutes.

“I praised Oklahoma,” White said. “I said that part of Oklahoma is they’re underrated — they’re underappreciated — for the defense. I think their defense is really awesome. … And at the end of the interview that was going down, the guys said something about just reloading it. I said, ‘Yeah, they definitely have reloaded, but I’m not going to get into that,’ and so now it gets blown up like I’m calling Coach (Patty) Gasso a cheater, which is nothing of the sort.

“I’ve got to live with it. And if Coach Gasso thinks I called her a cheater, I apologize. I did not. I did not call her a cheater.”

Gasso was asked about the comments after the game.

“I’m not surprised but I take the high road,” she said. “I don’t have to answer to anybody. I’ve just got to look in the mirror and I am very comfortable when I do that.”

White said he did not address the comments with Gasso before or after the game.

“No, I didn’t,” he said. “I think she’s upset. But again, I didn’t really say anything … maybe tomorrow.”

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Sooners answer early Longhorns homer

The Sooners quickly found themselves in a hole Friday, when Leighann Goode drove Jordy Bahl’s third pitch of the game out over the left-center field wall.

But then OU played the “anything you can do, I can do better” game.

The Sooners tied the game in the bottom of the first on Tiare Jennings’ single to center to score Jayda Coleman just two batters into the bottom of the inning.

But OU’s real response came in the second.

First Jennings’ blasted Estelle Czech’s first offering to the warning track far beyond the temporary outfield fencing, where it hit the warning track and bounced over the permanent wall.

Jennings’ three-run homer put the Sooners up 4-1.

The next batter, Haley Lee, blasted Czech’s 0-1 pitch to nearly the same part of the park, also hitting the permanent warning track and bounding over the wall.

No doubt the strong winds helped drive Jennings’ and Lee’s shots farther, but they were both going out regardless of the wind conditions at USA Softball Hall of Fame Stadium.

“Haley Lee’s was an absolute missile,” Sooners coach Patty Gasso said. “Those were just absolute, smoked missiles.”

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Rylie Boone, Sooners’ defense comes up big

With the game tied in the top of the second inning, left-fielder Rylie Boone came up big on back-to-back plays at the wall.

First, Bella Dayton sent Boone drifting back to her right, leaping to snag Dayton’s fly just in front of the wall.

Three pitches later, Leighann Goode — who led off the game with a homer — hit a shot that sent Boone running even more.

But Boone snagged Goode’s blast at the fence to keep the game tied.

“There’s no better feeling as a pitcher when you see her keep running, and she keeps getting closer to the fence and you’re just like, ‘Oh no, oh no,’ and then she just jumps up there and grabs it,” Sooners’ pitcher Jordy Bahl said.

Sooners coach Patty Gasso said Boone’s plays were tone-setters.

“Those are two balls that look like they were going and she made really great plays,” Gasso said.

The Sooners once again committed no errors. OU entered the weekend leading the nation with a .991 fielding percentage.

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Tiare Jennings’ ripped sock leads to overturned call

Texas had a chance to build some momentum once again after the Sooners took a 5-1 lead in the second.

It looked like the Longhorns were going to have two on with no out after Mia Scott drew a walk and Alyssa Washington appeared to reach first on a fielder’s choice.

But OU coach Patty Gasso didn’t get a great look at the play, but looked down and saw second baseman Tiare Jennings’ sock was ripped.

“I felt like there could be something else to that,” Gasso said. “So it was worth them checking. I felt it was a big start to a big inning if they would have been able to keep the runners up first and second. So that was a huge turning point in the game for us.”

After the review, both Scott and Washington were called out, as Scott was ruled to have slid outside the basepath.

“It was just a mess,” Texas coach Mike White said.

White said he hadn’t seen the replay yet.

“We certainly don’t teach our players to go in dangerously or try to hurt anybody,” White said. “If that’s the case, we’ll have to talk to Mia about that.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: OU softball: Sooners beat Texas Longhorns set NCAA attendance record