After Wednesday’s drubbing of Western Illinois, the No. 10 Missouri Tigers (33-8, 10-5 Big 12 Conference) sit just a game and a half back of the first-place and No. 5 Oklahoma Sooners (36-6, 11-3 Big 12).
With Oklahoma also winning Wednesday night to maintain its lead, this weekend’s series meeting in Norman, Okla., could determine who is in the driver’s seat for Big 12 supremacy.
“(The Sooners are) who we’ve got our eyes on,” junior outfielder Nicole Hudson said. “Regardless of where they are in the standings or where we are, that’s our rivalry in the Big 12, and we are absolutely going to bring it.”
The showdown series will feature two of the premier pitchers in both the conference and the nation. Missouri will throw redshirt junior Chelsea Thomas, while Oklahoma will counter with junior Keilani Ricketts.
Ricketts is 21-5 this year with a 0.96 ERA good for third-best in the nation, and also is third in strikeouts (253) and hits allowed per seven innings (3.74). Thomas, meanwhile, is fifth in ERA (0.97), 24th in strikeouts (183) and second in hits allowed per seven innings (3.72).
Both pitchers were listed as top 25 finalists for the 2012 USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year award earlier this month.
It’s unclear whether Ricketts will pitch all three games for Oklahoma. Hudson said despite the uncertainty, the team will prepare in the same way.
“I honestly don’t know (who will pitch), and every time we seem to predict it, it’s the opposite,” she said. “(Ricketts) is going to be good, but these are the big games we get up for.”
A handful of players, including freshman infielder Corrin Genovese, took extra batting practice after Wednesday’s game to prepare for the Sooner pitching staff.
“We’re going from seeing a 55 mph pitcher to seeing a 74 mph pitcher,” Genovese said. “We’ll be back in tune, ready to go for Oklahoma.”
Coach Ehren Earleywine shook up his regular lineup against Western Illinois, shifting Genovese from her usual spot at third base to shortstop and sliding freshman Angela Randazzo to the hot corner. He said this is the formation the team will utilize this weekend.
“Randazzo is a good drop ball hitter, and Ricketts is a drop-ball pitcher, so we have matchups there,” Earleywine said. “Corrin’s the best infielder in the Big 12, and maybe in the country, so putting your best infielder at shortstop can’t be a bad move.”
Earleywine said that in order to compete for the Big 12 title, the Tigers are going to have to win out the rest of their conference games.
“We’re going to have to run the table. It’s nine games of tough teams, especially Oklahoma,” he said. “We put ourselves in this position, so we’re going to see if we can get ourselves out of it.”
Despite slipping into fourth in the Big 12 standings, an unfamiliar position for a team that was atop the leaderboards for much of last year, Hudson said she thinks Missouri still has its eyes on the conference championship.
“We’ve made it really hard for ourselves, and it’s not at all the spot that we wanted to be in,” she said. “All we can do is focus on getting better each game. We just have to take care of ourselves and take care of business this weekend.“
