OU Softball: No Oklahoma Players Named Finalist for USA Softball Player of the Year
After Jordy Bahl, Jayda Coleman and Tiare Jennings all made the top 10 for Player of the Year, all three missed out on being named a finalist on Wednesday.
An Oklahoma Sooner won’t take home USA Softball National Collegiate Player of the Year honors in 2023.
OU stars Jordy Bahl, Jayda Coleman and Tiare Jennings all made the top 10 for the award, but none of the trio were named as top three finalists on Wednesday.
UCLA’s Maya Brady, Florida’s Skylar Wallace and Clemson’s Valerie Cagle were announced as finalists, and one of those three players will take home the award Jocelyn Alo won last year.
Brady is leading the charge for the Bruins, batting .458 with 18 home runs and 59 RBIs.
For Florida, Wallace is batting .460, hitting 19 home runs with a 1.036 slugging percentage, and Cagle has been as lethal as the plate as she is in the pitching circle, batting .457 and setting Clemson’s single-season home run record with 18 long balls.
At the top of Oklahoma’s lineup, Coleman is hitting .434, blasting a team-leading 14 home runs and contributing 42 RBIs.
Right behind her, Jennings has also been incredibly efficient this season, batting .429 with 12 home runs and 53 RBIs.
In the circle, Cagle has posted a 23-5 record with a 1.20 ERA in 169 innings pitched compared to Bahl’s 1.15 ERA over 109.1 innings pitched.
As a team, the Sooners have shared the load in 2023.
Oklahoma paces the country in both team batting average and team ERA.
Bahl, Alex Storako and Nicole May have all pitched at least 90 innings and five total Sooners have hit at least 10 home runs.
Though OU won’t have the National Player of the Year in 2023, there’s still plenty of silverware the program can capture.
Patty Gasso’s squad is riding a 43-game winning streak and enters the NCAA Tournament as the top overall seed.
If Oklahoma can march through the field and once again emerge out of the Women’s College World Series as champions, it will be the first time in over 30 years that a program has won back-to-back-to-back national titles at the pinnacle of college softball.
OU’s title defense will begin in the Norman Regional at 4 p.m. on Friday, as the Sooners will host the Hofstra Pride at Marita Hynes Field.
Source: Sports Illustrated
