Oklahoma State Has Well-Earned Confidence of Return to WCWS Despite Tough Postseason Draw

Oklahoma State’s path to the Women’s College World Series doesn’t look as smooth as usual this time around, but the Cowgirls coach had a simple message for his team once the bracket was set.

“I said, ‘Hey, it’s cool to look at that top eight and know that you beat four of them,” coach Kenny Gajewski said. “It’s cool to look at this whole bracket and go we beat a lot of them.’ That’s why we played this schedule.”

The Cowgirls finished 3-1 against the top four overall seeds including wins over Texas, Oklahoma and 1-1 split against Nebraska which is particularly relevant considering the winner of the Stillwater regional matches up with the winner of the Lincoln (Nebraska) regional in the Supers.

For context, only seven other teams in the country can claim multiple wins against the top four seeds this season including top seeds Alabama, Texas and Oklahoma.

The other four are No. 2 seed Arkansas (4-5 against top 4), No. 2 seed Tennessee (3-1) , No. 3 seed Georgia (3-6), No. 4 seed Texas A&M (2-5). Only the Volunteers and Cowgirls can claim a 75% winning percentage against the teams favored to make up half of the field in OKC.

The Cowgirls also went 6-3 overall against the top 16 seeds in the bracket and 17-12 against the overall field.

With that resume backing the team up, Gajewski said he felt confident Oklahoma State would receive a high enough seed to host a regional before the announcement on Sunday made it official. Of course, that confidence did nothing to diminish the joy of the moment for the Cowgirls.

“Never gets old to see your name being called and to see your kids jump up and scream and holler,” Gajewski said. “It’s really cool, and it’s why you coach. It’s why you do these kind of things for these type of moments. It reminded me of our first year here, when we didn’t know if we were in or not.”

The coach said the team had some hard conversations at the end of last year when the Cowgirls failed to secure a sixth consecutive trip to the Women’s College World Series after a frustrating loss on the road in the regional round.

Around the middle of the season, it seemed like the Cowgirls might spend the regional round on the road once again before the team caught fire winning 17 of its final 21 games.

“We been in the postseason now for a while,” Gajewski said, almost certainly referring to his team’s mindset down the stretch. “We’ve had to play like that for a while to probably to grab one of these seeds, right. And so we know that. That’s why I feel so good about these guys, because these are just games, man.”

Oklahoma State enters the postseason on a one-game losing streak after falling to Arizona State 11-7 in the conference semifinals.

While not the result he wanted, Gajewski was encouraged by his team’s refusal to give up after falling behind 6-1 after only two innings.

“I told them at the end of the Arizona State game how proud I was of them after we just got our butts kicked, but we fought our tails off like we did something that we hadn’t done yet,” Gajewski said. “Like we fought when we were down like that. Not saying that we haven’t come back and won, but it was an easy moment for this team to just lay down and go, okay, let’s just go home and get some rest. They got themselves up in the middle of that game in front of everybody in the stands, kind of made a decision to fight no matter what.”

On Friday, Oklahoma State opens regional play against Eastern Illinois with matchups against one or both of Stanford and Princeton to follow. These are the games that Gajewski and the Cowgirls prepare for all season.

“I told them at the end of that game (against Arizona State), I didn’t recruit you here to win Big 12s,” Gajewski said. “We never even talked about that. Wasn’t even, never mentioned it. Do I want to win that? Do we want to win those games? Yeah, we want to win those, we want to win everything.

“But I would trade all those things to get to OKC, because that’s the only chance you have to win the final game, the only chance. … Going to OKC to try to win the last game, that’s the only thing that we’re about here. I think they feel the same way, but that’s kind of how we talk. So it just feels good. It’s an easier road when you host. We’ve done it all ways, but I’m thankful to be here, to be in front of our fans, to do things that we set out to do.”