Oklahoma State softball doomed by errors vs BYU in Big 12 quarterfinal

Oklahoma State softball coach Kenny Gajewski talks about loss to BYU

Oklahoma State softball coach Kenny Gajewski talks about loss to BYU in Big 12 quarterfinal

Kenny Gajewski envisioned a weedeater in his future.

Penalty for his Oklahoma State softball team’s miserable performance in a 7-2 loss to sixth-seeded BYU in the quarterfinals of the Big 12 Tournament on Thursday at Devon Park, Gajewski was ready to mow his yard and clear his head.

“That’s the best therapy ever,” he said. “I’ve got 18 acres to get going on, so I’m gonna mow, and my punishment will be the weedeater.

“I usually make my son do it, but I’ll tell him, you get the day off today. Since we were so poor today, I’ll weedeat.”

The third-seeded Cowgirls suffered softball’s version of death by a thousand cuts, committing five errors, baserunning mistakes and some other hiccups that don’t necessarily show up in a scorebook.

“Obviously, not the way we drew this up,” Gajewski said. “I was counting on my scorecard, we had 11 popups, six (strikeouts), a pretty poor baserunning error and five errors. You can’t beat teams in this league, or anywhere in the country, playing like that.”

Since winning the tournament title by beating OU in 2022, the Cowgirls are 0-2 in this event.

Coming into the tournament, the Cowgirls were looking to pad their resume for the NCAA selection committee in hopes of locking up a top-eight seed, and thus, a home-field berth for the regional and super-regional rounds.

Ranked third in the coaches’ poll while holding the eighth spot in the RPI, OSU will have to wait until the NCAA Selection Show at 6 pm Sunday to find out its seeding fate.

But Gajewski isn’t panicking.

“At the end of the day, we’re a top-eight seed,” he said. “We’re a top-five seed. I think that. I would be shocked if we’re not. We played poorly today. If that knocks us out, we’ve earned that and we’ll take it. But I don’t think it does. I think we’re pretty firm.”

Here are three takeaways from the Cowgirl defeat:

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OSU committed five fielding errors, nearly all of which led directly to BYU runs.

Leading 1-0 in the top of the second inning, BYU scored its second run when shortstop Megan Bloodworth couldn’t handle a grounder that should’ve led to the final out of the inning.

Another run scored in the fourth inning when OSU catcher Caroline Wang had the ball knocked out of her glove as she tried to tag a sliding BYU baserunner at home plate. Two more scored immediately after on a single to right field by Ailana Agbayani.

BYU added two more runs in the sixth on errors by Rosie Davis and Lexi Kilfoyl, plus another miscue that didn’t qualify as an error but would’ve ended the inning.

It was a shocking performance for a team that came into the game ranked 10th nationally in fielding percentage at .978.

“I was thinking about the sixth inning, if I was a football coach I’d say, ‘Five turnovers, we have no shot to win a game,” Gajewski said. “I’ve been pretty open that we can have some bad moments, and this was one of them. But we’re pretty good at bouncing back.

“The positive I can take out of this is I don’t think we can play worse and hopefully we got a lot of this stuff out of us.”

While the subpar showing hurt in the moment, the Cowgirls’ veteran leaders have the right mindset to help the team recover.

“Yeah, it’s a punch in the gut walking away from that game knowing we could’ve won,” Wang said. “But it doesn’t make me less confident in what we can achieve going forward.”

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The Cowgirl bats were mostly silent Thursday, at one point having more errors than hits on the scoreboard.

OSU finished with seven hits and very little solid contact against BYU pitcher Chloe Temples, who succeeded by mixing up her pitch speeds effectively.

“I thought she changed speeds well. She was up in the zone early and we couldn’t lay off that,” Gajewski said. “She made our hitters look like they were swinging a telephone pole. I kept saying, man, our bats look slow. And that was her with the change of speed that made it tough.

“I came into this game knowing we would take good at-bats and put the ball in play hard, and we just didn’t do that.”

Wang provided the only long fly balls of the day for an offense that pounded seven home runs in his two wins over OU last weekend. Wang had a long flyout early, then lined a double into the right-center field gap to score Tallen Edwards from second after a double of her own in the bottom of the sixth.

OSU ran itself out of a scoring opportunity in the third inning when Bloodworth and Jilyen Poullard had back-to-back singles. Bloodworth initially tried to go from first to third on Poullard’s hit, but stopped halfway and got tagged out in a rundown.

Perhaps the brightest spot of the day for the OSU offense was Edwards, who had a single and a double. The sophomore third baseman came into the game with four hits in his last 36 at-bats, dating back to March 30. She finished 2 for 3 with a run scored.

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Off to Broken Bow

As has become a tradition for the Cowgirls after the Big 12 Tournament, they’ll head to Broken Bow this weekend for a mini-retreat.

Because they expected to still be playing Saturday, they’ll have a couple days left in Stillwater before heading out.

“We’ll practice one or two days before we head down to Broken Bow,” Gajewski said. “If you’re gonna lose, I wanna lose on the first day. (Kilfoyl and Wang) are my grandmas here. I gotta let them rest, take care of them.

“We’ll get recovered and get these guys a couple days off. They need it for the stretch run.”

The trip has proven valuable in the past, providing a mental reset for the team, or a bonding opportunity prior to the NCAA Tournament. Last year, OSU had lost 11 of its previous 13 games before the Broken Bow trip.

They responded with five straight wins to earn a fourth straight appearance in the Women’s College World Series.

“I think it’s always beneficial when we get away from softball as a team,” Kilfoyl said. “We’re at the softball field so much together. Just getting away and doing something like laying out by the pool, just chit-chatting and talking about all the success we’ve had in the year is really good for all of us. It’s something we all look forward to every year.

“I’m excited to step away from the field for a little bit, relax and enjoy each other’s company.”