BYU’s magical run at the Big 12 softball tournament ended in a disappointing fashion Friday afternoon as the Cougars were crushed 13-2 in five innings by No. 3-ranked Oklahoma in a semifinal in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
BYU was dealt a tough blow before the game even started when star shortstop and leading hitter Ailana Agbayani was held out due to an undisclosed injury suffered in BYU’s 7-2 win over No. 2 Oklahoma State on Thursday.
Agbayani had four hits in BYU’s 9-4 upset of Oklahoma on April 12 in Norman. In an interview on ESPN+ during the game, BYU coach Gordon Eakin said Agbayani got hurt when she crashed into “that great tarp thing down there” along the left-field line while trying to track down a foul ball.
Oklahoma moves on to face either top-seeded Texas or fourth-seeded Baylor in the Big 12 championship game Saturday, while sixth-seeded BYU awaits Sunday’s Selection Show to learn whether it will get an at-large berth into the NCAA Tournament.
The Cougars, 31-23 overall, went 12-16 in conference play and had an RPI of 48 going into Friday’s game against one of the best programs in women’s college softball history. The Cougars have three wins over top-10 teams on their resume.
But they just didn’t have it Friday, falling behind 3-0 in the first inning and not recording a hit off OU ace Kierston Deal, who is now 12-0 in her last 12 starts, until the fifth inning.
BYU’s Macy Simmons broke up the no-hitter with a two-out single to right in the fifth and final inning, then Hailey Morrow hit a two-run homer off Deal, Morrow’s 10th homer of the season.
It was a nice finish for the overmatched Cougars, but the outcome was no longer in doubt.
On a 78-degree day in OKC, with the wind slightly blowing in, Eakin started lefty pitcher Gianna Mares, but the freshman struggled from the onset.
She gave up a solo homer to Ella Parker, and was almost out of the inning when she seemed to have piped a two-strike pitch to Kasidi Pickering. But the pitch was called a ball, and on the next pitch Pickering slapped a two-run single to left to give the Sooners a 3-0 advantage.
Kate Dahle and then Thursday-winner Chloe Temples relieved Mares in the third inning, but OU pushed across two more runs to take more control.
Oklahoma exploded for eight runs in the bottom of the fourth, and that was that.
Before BYU’s uprising in the fifth, Deal was in total control. BYU put two aboard in the second inning, but Maddie Udall lined into a double play. Huntyr Ava hit a ball hard in the third inning, but OU third baseman Alyssa Brito made a great play on the one-hopper and threw Ava out at first.
Defensively, the Cougars committed two errors and four BYU pitchers gave up five walks and fanned just one OU hitter.