Sooners Sweep Back-to-Back Games

OU beat Northern Iowa and Utah in completely different fashions.

Thursday, May 26th 2011, 11:34 am

By: News On 6

Originally Published: Mar 13, 2010 10:53 PM CDT

Corey DeMoss
Oklahoma Sports Staff Writer

NORMAN, Oklahoma – The OU softball team built its winning streak to six with victories over both Northern Iowa and Utah Saturday as part of the Oklahoma Spring Festival.

The Sooners defeated Northern Iowa in the first game 4-1 with all of their runs coming in the game’s first two innings.

Haley Nix led off the game for OU with a home run to give the Sooners a quick lead. After Amber Flores and Chana’e Jones both stole bases on the same pitch, Jessica Shults drove both of them in with a two-run double to give OU a 3-0 after the first.

Shults added another RBI in the second inning, and pitcher Keilani Ricketts handled things from there. Ricketts pitched a complete game, giving up one earned run on four hits and striking out a season-high 13.

Hours after beating NIU, the Sooners rode an almost completely opposite performance to victory against Utah.

OU started very slow in the second game, recording just three hits and one run in the first four innings. Utah held a 2-1 lead but started to fall apart in the final frames.

In the fifth inning, Utah pitcher Brittany Parker walked three batters – including one with the bases loaded – to give OU easy runs. All three of the players Parker walked ended up scoring, and the Sooners recorded five runs in the inning on only two hits. Dani Dobbs capped the inning with a three-run double that gave OU a 6-2 lead.

The Utes responded with three runs in the sixth to cut the lead back to one, but gave away runs again in the bottom of the inning. Utah committed two of its four errors in the sixth, and both directly resulted in Sooner scores. OU put three runs on the board with only one hit in the inning and finished with a 9-5 win on just six hits.

The victory came one day after the Sooners crushed Utah 12-1 in a game that was called after five innings to start the Oklahoma Spring Festival. The Sooners will finish the festival with a rematch against Northern Iowa at 12:15 p.m. Sunday.