Iowa State softball will get back to the mound by facing the national defending champions in Oklahoma in a Big-12 showdown, traveling to Norman for this contest due to weather conditions. 

The Big-12 have a permitted rule that goes into effect once the playing conditions inside the diamond go below freezing point, then the game cannot be played. For that, the schedule had been altered to allow for these games to made up in Norman.

The Cyclones are coming off a 0-3 sweep by the Texas Longhorns in their home opener that saw them lose 8-5 in the first game, 8-0 in the second game that only played five innings, and a 11-4 loss in their third game.

The Sooners are coming in with a lot of momentum, coming off a 22-game winning streak that included wins over Texas Tech, South Carolina, Arizona and Arizona State.

Along with their nationally ranked #2 club, the Sooners also have the contribution of the senior pitcher Paige Parker, who was named USA Softball Collegiate National Player of the Week.

The Cyclones have faced Big-12 rivals Oklahoma before, in their last meetings, the Cyclones lost to them 1-7, 0-20, and 4-13 in the 2016-17 season.

Since their home-opener loss to the Texas Longhorns, the Cyclones had an entire weekend of practice in addition since they had a double-header on Friday.

“I know during our games, we had good amount of hits, but we didn’t have hits when it mattered and scoring in those runners,” Williams said.

In that time, the Cyclones were scheduled to take on Drake on Wednesday April 4th, but due to weather in Ames, the game was postponed to a later date.

Meanwhile, the Cyclones had time to work on certain things, such as situational hitting, placing runners in certain areas to visualize game situations.

“Obviously we need to see an improvement on that, I think they are learning in what we want as a staff. And I think they’re working on it, but I want to continue working on it tonight,” head coach Jaime Pinkerton said.

Pinkerton had previously stated that him and his coaching staff had trouble getting the players to play-in runners, and these practices his coaching staff focused on getting player to imagine different scenarios that could occur in games.

Key hitter Sami Williams focused on this hitting problem that the Cyclones have had

“I don’t know if it’s the pressure of it, I always been taught “it doesn’t take a hit to score the runner. Anything to the right side, even if it’s just a weak groundball to the second basemen it’ll score the runner,” Williams said.

“I think someone our coaches are really hitting on right now is being a less selfish hitter. Especially like [Sami Williams] said, setting runners are in scoring positions, and we really try to work on knowing what we need to do in each situations” Stites said.

This time for the Cyclones to practice has been hampered just as much as it has given them time to get ready for Oklahoma.

Since the weather is considered too cold with windshield, the players are forced to practice in the Bergstorm Facility.

“Basically, what we can still do in here in here is eye-hand coordination, work on glove work. I don’t want to make excuses for us. I think it’s been an exclusively long winter, and we’ve been on our field twice, not counting the games,” Pinkerton said.

The games agaisnt Texas saw the Cyclones being able use their homefield, but the homefield advantage wasn’t evident due to limited time there.

Along with this Drake game, the scheduling of these games could vary on the weather.

“Definitely it’s a good opportunity for us to get more practice in and focus on the things we didn’t execute well in the Texas series. But we were looking forward to playing Drake, just trying to get our momentum back from last weekend,” said Sydney Stites.

Iowa State will now gain a home series next season on their schedule due to this game being moved up to Norman for the 2019 season. 

The Series will now begin with a double-header on Sunday starting at noon, with the next game being on 2. The series finale will be played Monday at noon.