What We Learned: Texas Makes Statement, Baylee Klingler Never Misses, Ace Up Auburn’s Sleeve
Top StoriesAfter a weekend of watching and covering college softball, D1Softball’s Graham Hays, Rhiannon Potkey and Brady Vernon share the players, teams, trends and stories that caught their eye.
Jump to: Baylee Klinger never misses | Measuring Skylar Wallace’s value | Duke’s “Gold-en” rule | Fullerton makes a move | Oregon rising in Pac-12 | Big 12 Freshman of the Year race
Rhiannon Potkey
Texas makes a statement by sweeping Oklahoma State. The young Longhorns aren’t experiencing many growing pains this season. To the contrary, they just keep experiencing success. Infused by a group of talented and fearless freshmen, Texas pulled off the sweep of the Cowgirls to vault into second place in the Big 12 standings. Reese Atwood grabbed the headlines with her continued clutch hitting. Atwood’s walk-off three-run home run against OSU ace Kelly Maxwell in Game 2 marked the freshman catcher’s third consecutive conference game with a game-ending hit. Atwood became the first player in Texas program history to accomplish that feat. Atwood and fellow freshmen Leighann Goode, Viviana Martinez and Citlaly Gutierrez have kept Texas on track for another potential Women’s College World Series appearance after finishing runner-up to Oklahoma last season. The Longhorns don’t have to get hot late this year. They’ve been rolling from the very start.
Another newcomer is making major contributions as well for the Longhorns. Mac Morgan is a sophomore transfer from Arizona State. By throwing 1.2 innings of scoreless relief in the series finale, Morgan extended her consecutive innings pitched without allowing a run to 29.2 straight innings over her last six appearances. Morgan threw a complete-game eight-inning shutout in the opener against the Cowgirls. It was the first complete-game shutout of her collegiate career and the eight innings pitched were a career high.
Oklahoma is just three wins away from another title. Texas did the Sooners a favor by sweeping Oklahoma State. Combined with Oklahoma sweeping Baylor this weekend, the Sooners have a four-game lead in the Big 12 standings. That means if OU sweeps Kansas next weekend, the Sooners will have clinched another regular-season Big 12 title. It would make the Bedlam series against Oklahoma State to end the regular season strictly for bragging rights. OU could potentially clinch the regular-season crown at Marita Hynes Field on Senior Day, which would be a fitting way to send out stalwarts like Grace Lyons and Kinzie Hansen.
In avenging their only loss of the season by sweeping Baylor, the Sooners reminded everyone their offense is just a piece of the dominance puzzle. They showcased their elite pitching and defense. Baylor held OU to just 13 runs across the three games, but the Sooners gave up no runs. Jordy Bahl, Alex Storako and Nicole May combined to surrender 10 hits in the circle. The three shutouts were the second Big 12 series this season where the Sooners have not allowed a run (they also did it against Texas Tech). OU registered its fourth Big 12 sweep of the season and secured its 52nd straight conference series win (44 sweeps in that span). The Sooners got the timely hits needed to win all three games. Sure, they would prefer to see the offense have more production with big innings. But being able to win games in a variety of ways is truly what has made Oklahoma such a juggernaut.
Auburn-Alabama showdowns need to happen more. After the entertaining series they provided this weekend, Alabama and Auburn should do everything possible to find a way to play each season. The longtime rivals were meeting for the first time since 2021 and the first time in Tuscaloosa since 2017 (Covid canceled the 2020 games scheduled for Rhoads Stadium). The electric atmosphere and intensity on Saturday and Sunday showed how much fans were missing. The rubber match on Sunday featured the starting showdown everyone wanted to see with Alabama’s Montana Fouts and Auburn’s Maddie Penta in the circle. Penta outdueled Fouts in the 3-1 win. Penta allowed six hits and struck out eight while Fouts allowed seven hits and struck out 11. Bri Ellis and Denver Bryant produced clutch hits for Auburn for a second straight day and an unlikely offensive hero emerged. Carlee McCondichie broke a 12-game hitless streak with a home run off Fouts in the third inning to open the scoring.
Before the 2021 game, the last time Auburn and Alabama had met was 2018. The SEC’s schedule skips teams in the rotation each season. That will continue once Oklahoma and Texas join the conference for the 2025 season, when every team will play a three-game series against eight rotating opponents for a total of 24 conference games. Rivalries are what make college sports great. Conference realignment has robbed fans of some of these showdowns. It would be great if programs would schedule at least one nonconference game each season to ensure atmospheres like this weekend happen more.
Nebraska’s Courtney Wallace received a well-earned rest. Wallace has been a true workhorse for the Huskers this season. The senior pitcher gutted out a victory in the series opener against Wisconsin on Friday night, going all 10 innings and throwing 199 pitches in a 7-6 walk-off win. It was the longest outing of Wallace’s career, and also the 22nd straight game she had pitched in some capacity. That marked the longest consecutive streak for a Nebraska pitcher since Ashley Hagemann appeared in 24 straight games in 2011. But Wallace didn’t get a chance to match or surpass Hagemann. She didn’t appear in Nebraska’s 4-3 loss on Saturday in which the Badgers rallied for three runs in the seventh to win. It was probably tempting for Nebraska head coach Rhonda Revelle to turn to Wallace in relief, but the health of a player always comes first. A fresher Wallace was back in the circle for the series clincher on Sunday, throwing a complete-game five-hitter in the 2-1 win to improve to 21-8.
Mid-majors have major midweek success. Wichita State, Central Arkansas, Liberty and McNeese were among the programs beating ranked Power Five programs last week while Alabama State, an HBCU program, took down Georgia Tech. The term mid-major is not derogatory. It just means the schools reside in conferences with less resources than the Power Five programs. All the teams that won games against ranked teams have a history of success. Although finances help, the game doesn’t know how much money a program has. Good coaching and good recruiting play a big role. That’s the beauty of sports. Credit also goes to the Power Five programs that are willing to play the games, especially the ones on the road. It doesn’t always benefit their RPI, but it can help grow the sport and attract larger crowds.
Myka Sutherlin pitches Cal State Fullerton to the top of the Big West. The senior ace helped the Titans sweep UC Santa Barbara and move into first place all alone in the Big West Conference standings after Long Beach State dropped a game against Cal Poly. Sutherlin opened the series against the Gauchos by throwing a three-hitter with a career-high tying 14 strikeouts in a 7-1 win. The run was the first Sutherlin (15-7) had allowed in 28.2 innings. Over her last six starts, Sutherlin has thrown four complete games with 49 strikeouts and just one run in 36.2 IP. Sutherlin and teammate Haley Rainey led the Big West in ERA, with Rainey at 1.11 and Sutherlin at 1.46. Sutherlin leads the conference in opposing batting average (.166), IP (149.0) and strikeouts (185). During the series against UCSB, the Titans won the 1,700th game in program history to become the eighth team in NCAA history to have 1,700 wins.
- In other Big West action, Cal State Northridge and UC Riverside needed two days to play Game 2 of their series. They were forced to halt the game on Saturday night after 15 innings with the score tied 2-2 because of darkness. They returned to the field on Sunday afternoon and immediately started hitting. CSUN scored four runs in the top of the 16th and held on to beat the Highlanders 6-5. The Big West record for the longest game is 20 innings, set in 1991 when Hawaii defeated Utah State. The Matadors completed the series sweep over UCR with a 1-0 win later Sunday.
Taylor Roby keeps moving up the Louisville record charts. After hitting two home runs in the series sweep of Virginia, Roby is the program’s new single-season leader with 19, which is tied for the NCAA lead this season. The graduate senior’s 59 career home runs are a program best. Roby is tied for second at UL in career RBIs (175), which is 16 away from No. 1. Her 112 career walks are tied for second. Roby and Korbe Otis are big reasons why the Cardinals have won four of six ACC series this season.
Graham Hays
Baylee Klinger is special. Wait, we knew that. She’s special because she controls the plate so well. All right, we’ve had years and years of evidence there, too. But if we didn’t learn anything new about Washington’s special one this weekend, we saw more evidence of it in her walk-off home run Saturday night. Going into Sunday’s finale against Utah, she was one of seven players in Division I who struck out in fewer than 2.5 percent of their plate appearances this season. The other seven have 41 career home runs between them. A newly-renewed member of Team USA ahead of this summer’s international play, Klinger has 59 career collegiate home runs (and just 35 strikeouts in nearly 900 plate appearances).
There are more than 400 Division I players with more strikeouts this season than Baylee Klingler has in four seasons at UW (23 in nearly 700 plate appearances). After she went 6-for-11 with two home runs (and no strikeouts) to lead the Huskies to success in a hard-fought series, there are just five active D1 players with more career HR.
Skylar Wallace holds up the (Gators’) world. Going into Sunday’s game against Tennessee, Skylar Wallace ranked third in the nation with 59 weighted runs created (measuring a player’s total offensive contributions). But even more impressively, she was 22 weighted runs created ahead of anyone else in Florida’s lineup. That was a bigger lead than either Clemson’s Valerie Cagle (17) or Indiana’s Taryn Kern (16), the two players who rank ahead of Wallace nationally, had on any of their teammates. Wallace’s lead was bigger than Tennessee’s Kiki Milloy (9), UCLA’s Maya Brady (13) or Oklahoma’s Jayda Coleman (8). It was bigger than just about anybody.
I still lean toward Cagle for player of the year because, again, none of these players also rank among the nation’s best pitchers. And Milloy, Brady, Coleman have strong cases bolstered by the excellence of their respective teams. I’m also going to mention Sydney McKinney in every conversation about this subject because she deserves to be there. I’m hoping to dig into these numbers in more detail in the next week or two, but run for run, it’s hard to argue that anyone is more single-handedly responsible for a lineup’s success than Wallace. As we saw in Game 1, when Wallace homered and Milloy and the Lady Vols still run-ruled the Gators, or Game 2, when her late home run couldn’t rescue the day after Tennessee’s epic comeback, there is only so much one person can do. But it’s impressive.
Speaking of that comeback Sunday night. Tennessee had a 7.27% chance of winning the game as late as the bottom of the sixth inning, according to our friends at 6-4-3 Charts. Considering how heavily the Vols lean on their record against RPI top 25 opponents in the race for NCAA super regional hosting, and how much the Gators need the same metric on their side to outpace the likes of Washington, Oregon and Louisiana in the race to host a regional, that seven-run sixth inning may well continue to ripple across the college softball landscape well into May.
Wichita State’s Alex Aguilar had an eye-catching week. How will Wichita State ever replace Sydney McKinney when the All-American completes her eligibility? Well, the way things are going, the Shockers won’t need to replace every run McKinney produces—not if Aguilar is going to keep throwing shutouts. The freshman blanked East Carolina with a three-hitter on Saturday, and it wasn’t even her most impressive outing of the week. That came in a midweek win at Oklahoma State, when Aguilar went all eight innings and allowed just one run. She also picked up a win in relief Sunday, finishing off the sweep with four innings of two-hit shutout pitching. Since beating UCF at the end of March, a game she won thanks largely to run support, she’s allowed four earned runs in 42.2 innings in April. She’s not a strikeout machine, but she keeps the ball in the yard and, with a bit of a blip against the Cowgirls, doesn’t put extra runners on base. The Shockers are still a big-hitting bunch, they’re going to enter the postseason with their lowest ERA in this recent run of successful seasons.
Oklahoma is still cruising, but the Sooners’ grip on one title is slipping. Which is another way of saying Big 12 Freshman of the Year is one heck of a difficult vote. Clearly, Reese Atwood has the best campaign motto—whatever it was that she exclaimed right after the ball left her bat on Saturday’s walk-off home run against Oklahoma State. But seriously, who is the favorite for freshman honors in the Big 12? Like everything else in college softball, Oklahoma has claimed this prize for itself in recent years. Sooners have won the past six awards outright, and Paige Parker shared it with Kansas’ Danielle Chavez the year before that streak began.
- It looked early this season that Jocelyn Erickson might make it seven in a row without much difficulty. And if we’re talking overall season value, she still has a case. But Oklahoma’s depth has limited her time in conference play.
- Leighann Goode, Viviana Martinez and Atwood have been instrumental in Texas’ success, but even putting aside a dip in numbers in Big 12 games, which one do you vote for? If we’re talking conference performance, Atwood’s amazing run of walk-off hits notwithstanding, Citlaly Gutierrez (3-1, 2.31 ERA) may yet win the Austin primary.
- How about an outsider? Texas Tech hasn’t produced an award winner since transfer Kim Martinez won the short-lived Newcomer of the Year Award in 1997. But from start to finish, whether you want to talk season-long or conference play, Kailey Wyckoff has given fans in Lubbock a reason to buy what Craig Snider is selling about the future. Even after a slow start in the Kansas series that concludes Monday, Wyckoff is slashing .375/.479/.750 in Big 12 games and .430/.490/.815 overall.
People are still talking about asterisks. I found myself slightly aggravated during a recent broadcast when an announcer spent several seconds laying out a case for why Wichita State’s Sydney McKinney would need an asterisk if she ended up setting a NCAA record for career hits. McKinney, who had just her fifth hitless game of the season over the weekend, isn’t going to catch Arizona’s Alison McCutcheon’s record of 405 hits unless the Shockers make a run to Oklahoma City—and it’s far from a lock even then. But this announcer’s reasoning for the asterisk? The NCAA’s COVID eligibility that meant the 27 games she played in 2020 didn’t count toward her clock. This is a maddening argument. Yes, McKinney totaled 34 hits in 2020 and will play four-plus seasons. Here’s the thing. Teams play a lot fewer games than they used to! McKinney played her 236th career game in the weekend finale against East Carolina. She has five more regular season games and then anywhere from three to 14 or 15 more depending on postseason runs. At the outer extreme, if Wichita State reaches the WCWS championship series, she might play 256 career games. Guess how many games McCutcheon played at Arizona? It’s a number between 255 and 257.
I was reminded of all of this when Wisconsin’s Katie Keller tied former Florida State All-American Sydney Sherrill for second in career doubles. Surely, the NIU transfer got a boost from the COVID years. Nope, she’s played 208 games—75 fewer than Sherrill and 63 fewer than all-time Division I leader Sara Pickering. I thought all of this was put to rest last year, when Jocelyn Alo would have broken Lauren Chamberlain’s career home run record in fewer games than her predecessor—until opposing coaches started walking her for about three consecutive weeks. COVID eligibility is one piece in a massive jigsaw puzzle of the game’s statistical history.
Central Connecticut may have lost the weekend but is winning the season. It won’t surprise many softball fans to find Saint Francis tied atop the NEC standings as the regular season winds down, but the perennial power had to work hard to stay there this past weekend. And that hints at one of the more quietly impressive stories of the season. Saint Francis kept a share of the lead by winning two of three against fellow contender Central Connecticut. The same CCSU that went 8-41 a season ago, one of the worst records in Division I. The Blue Devils lost this week’s series but are just a game behind Saint Francis and co-leader Merrimack and 18-14 overall. If maintained for two more weeks, that 18.5 game improvement, as the NCAA measures the statistic, would match the Division I-leading mark Penn State achieved a season ago. And CCSU could yet become just the second team in the past decade (along with Pete D’Amour’s Virginia Tech team in 2019) to have a 20-game improvement. Only the top four seeds make the NEC tournament, and right now, CCSU looks like it will be one of them.
- There are many reasons a team improves, but give a big slice of the credit to pitcher Kaylee Whitaker. She’s 17-9 with a 2.70 ERA this season, while those numbers are 1-5 with a 7.97 ERA when she’s not involved.
Sarah Willis and UCF are biding their time. The Knights aren’t ranked and aren’t going to host a regional this year. But that might just mean they have postseason opponents right where they want them. UCF swept the annual “War on I-4” series from USF, leaving only Wichita State and Cindy Ball-Malone’s team above .500 in the American Athletic. Sarah Willis picked up two wins against the Bulls, including an eighth-inning complete game in the opener—when fellow transfer Chloe Evans tied the game in the sixth inning and delivered the walk-off hit in the eighth. In AAC play, Willis is 5-0 with a 0.92 ERA and 0.95 ERA, numbers that include a gem of a start against the league-leading Shockers. Pitching was supposed to be the question mark for UCF this season, but Willis and Grace Jewell provided the answer. And with the lineup gaining confidence in conference play, this weekend’s run-production woes aside, don’t sleep on UCF.
Courtney Coppersmith has one final act. Just when the days of Coppersmith dominating hitters appeared to be at an end, the mid-major ace is back. UMBC’s fifth-year standout struck out 12 in a one-hit shutout against Maine over the weekend and closed out another win. She has three double-digit strikeout performances this month, after pitching just 18 innings in February and March. In the offseason, UMBC coach Chris Kuhlmeyer acknowledged the physical toll the game had taken on Coppersmith in her time in college, and it appeared she had almost fully transitioned to an everyday outfield role for her final season (she’s hitting .271 with a .723 OPS). But just in time for the America East postseason, she’s rounding into form.
Brady Vernon
Ana Gold’s second-year leap has a lot to do with Duke’s success. The sophomore third baseman set the program’s season-single home run record on Sunday with her 18th big fly of the year. Gold currently sits at 135 at-bats and a .311 average, the exact numbers she had last year. But her OPS is 1.212 compared to 1.036 last season. The Blue Devils had five players hit double-digit home runs last year, but Gold was the only returnee on this year’s squad. She’s currently the lone player on the team with double-digit homers, and barring a crazy power burst from someone else, only freshman Aminah Vega will join her. Gold has stepped up in a huge way and is a big reason Duke may be on its way to a top eight seed in the postseason.
Maddie Penta makes Auburn a two-seed no one wants to see in the postseason. Whether it’s an ACC or Pac-12 host, I don’t think anyone is signing up to face Auburn knowing that means facing Maddie Penta. The flamethrower leads a talented pitching staff, with Shelby Lowe and Annabelle Widra equipped for a regional. As we saw Sunday, and as Rhiannon Potkey noted, Penta went head-to-head with Montana Fouts and won. Penta could easily get into another pitcher’s duel against a top team and its ace. The Tigers offense can be inconsistent, but if Penta only needs a run or two, they hold plenty of power up and down the lineup to potentially provide that go-ahead blast like they did in Tuscaloosa.
Oregon might be getting hot at the right time. The Ducks certainly had their hands full when they started the Pac-12 slate with Washington, Stanford and UCLA. Oregon didn’t win any of those series, but took a game in each—which still help when it comes to being a potential host. Oregon has won nine straight and 11 of its last 12. They get to finish the season with Cal and Utah, two teams with good RPIs. If Oregon can win its last two series and a game in the Pac-12 tournament, there’s a good chance Oregon can slide in as a regional host. UNC Greensboro transfer Morgan Scott is pitching really well right now —11 earned runs in her last 56 innings (1.37 ERA)—and is used as a starter and a closer. Allee Bunker is always stable but Terra McGowan, Ariel Carlson and Kai Luschar are swinging the bat well.
Kristin Fifield deserves a bit of recognition. Grand Canyon doesn’t play the hardest schedule in the nation, but just like Marshall’s Autumn Owen and Santa Clara’s Ashley Trierweiler, what she has done is impressive. Fifeild set the program’s all-time home run record last week and continues to drive the ball out of the yard. She hit a pair out in the series finale to sweep Seattle this weekend and homered in the win against Arizona State earlier in the week. Fifield has 14 doubles and 17 home runs. The only other player with those marks is Valerie Cagle. Yes, that Valerie Cagle.
We might see a postseason without Arizona and Arizona State. Speaking of that loss to GCU, it really hurt the Sun Devils’ postseason chances. Arizona State has lost eight straight after being swept by UCLA. At 21-20, it’s going to be a battle to maintain a .500 record. The Sun Devils have six regular season games remaining against Stanford and Oregon State. Because of the new conference tournament, it needs to go 3-3 in those remaining games to guarantee a .500 finish. And say Arizona State goes 2-4 in those games? It would then need two wins in the Pac-12 tournament to finish .500 (because it would add another loss when it exits the Pac-12 tournament). It also might not even matter, as Arizona State’s RPI is hovering around 50, which will be a tough sell.
The Wildcats are in a better place than their rivals, but they might be worse off than they were last year. Arizona has dropped 15 of its last 16 Pac-12 games and needed two comebacks in that lone win to beat Utah. The Wildcats sit four games above .500, so that truly shouldn’t be an issue with the injury-riddled Oregon State team still on the slate. However, Arizona’s RPI over 40 in the current moment probably means the team will sweat out Selection Sunday, although, a series win against Cal could certainly help change that.
How crazy of a thought is that? One of Arizona or Arizona State has been a regional host every year since 2017.
More from the weekend
Friday recap: Laurin Krings dials up Ks | Saturday recap: Reese Atwood walks it off again