Why ESPN's Amanda Scarborough Believes This is Patty Gasso's 'Best Coaching Job Yet' at Oklahoma

Freshmen sensations Sydney Romero, Shay Knighten, Caleigh Clifton and Falepolima Aviu joined sophomores Nicole Pendley, Kelsey Arnold, Paige Parker and Lea Wodach alongside veterans Erin Miller and Paris Townsend to climb atop the softball mountain. 

It was an incredible achievement for a group that returned in 2017 and won it all again, but Gasso’s 2025 freshmen face a very different challenge at this year’s WCWS — defending four titles that were one before stepping on campus.

“I think it’s exponentially tougher because they get everybody’s best game every single game,” ESPN analyst Amanda Scarborough told Sooners on SI at Devon Park on Wednesday. “The target on their back only gets bigger and bigger no matter if it’s the senior class that won four national championships on the team or if it’s a lot of new faces. The target doesn’t go away. It doesn’t matter who is on the roster. 

“What that 2016 team did was great, but I think after winning four national championships in a row it becomes tougher and tougher every year to make it back here and to even put yourself in contention to win it.”

Getting back to Oklahoma City was something even Gasso was unsure of back in October, a thought that seems so crazy now that it shows the progress the team has made over the year. 

“I mean I’ve never seen anything like it,” Scarborough said. “Each and every year, to be able to get here is always hard. Even to make it here is hard, never less win it four years in a row. But this year has to be her best coaching job yet with a completely new team and getting them to put pressure and expectations aside.

“… And get them just to rally around each other and believe in each other, I don’t know how she does it. Everybody is trying to understand how she does it. But it’s extremely impressive.”

Starting out 1-0 gives the Sooners an off day on Friday, allowing Gasso and her coaching staff to prepare the team for a rematch with 6-seeded Texas. 

Read More Oklahoma Softball at the WCWS:

• Oklahoma Walks Off Tennessee in Clutch WCWS Thriller
• COLUMN: There's No Denying Sooner Magic in Oklahoma's Latest WCWS Conquest
• Defense Bought Oklahoma Time to Overcome Tennessee

And while it took OU’s offense until the bottom of the seventh to get to Tennessee ace Karlyn Pickens, the late season improvement sticks out to Scarborough as another sign of the steps Oklahoma continues to take. 

“After they lost the Alabama series I saw a different aggressiveness in their offense that kind of reset or re-click them back into the Oklahoma offensive way,” she said. “So it’s just their powerful swings and intimidating swings that yeah, it’s a new face and a new uniform, but that Oklahoma aggressiveness was there at the end of the season was super impressive always.”

The Sooners and the Longhorns will meet for the fourth time on Saturday at 2 p.m.

Saturday’s victor will move within one game of the WCWS Championship Series.