Patty Gasso claims she 'overreacted' following Oklahoma softball loss to Georgia in SEC Tournament

Oklahoma and Patty Gasso found themselves eliminated earlier than anticipated in the SEC softball tournament. The No. 1 Sooners fell 10-5 to No. 9 Georgia in the quarterfinals, who in turn lost to eventual champion Texas in the next round.

Gasso teed off after the loss, saying the team will practice to the point of exhaustion and until their hands bleed. The long time head coach acknowledged that might have been a little overboard, so she walked back the comments a little bit.

While doing that, Gasso did say the team responded well after the loss and now looks ahead to the NCAA Regionals, in pursuit of another national title. If you’re Gasso, you don’t win eight titles, including four in a row from 2021-24 by accident.

“So I think I overreacted a little bit at the end talking about making players’ hands bleed, which is just really my emotions speaking,” Gasso said on Sirius XM. “But did I have an amount of alumni sending me (messages) like ‘it’s about time, finally, you’re going to be tough again,’ you know all of that and like, it just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work that way. 

“So I went back and talked with the team yesterday … and we just kind of reset, we talked about it. We have a pretty good plan going forward that I think is going to really help us through some of the times that we, against Georgia, it’s been a long time since someone came from behind and just took it from us. And that’s exactly what Georgia did, and they earned every second of it, and we were a little too shell shocked, and that’s got to change. Can’t come in with that mentality or be afraid of that. So we had some conversation, but a lot of good, hard practice, no bleeding hands, but hard practice.”

Gasso’s original comments came off like Oklahoma was ready to go back to the preseason grind to get it right. Safe to say, even if hands didn’t bleed, the Sooners will be prepared for the NCAA Tournament.

“We’re going to press you every day throughout the entire practice, to the point of exhaustion. And you should keep asking for more and more and more until your hands bleed,” Gasso said. “That’s the mentality we want our players to have instead of, ‘Oh, we’re good. Oh, we’re good.’ No, we’re not good, and we showed that (vs. Georgia).

“So that is going to be our approach. We’re going back, and we are going to work as hard as we ever have in a short window to have ourselves prepared for a home regional.”

Oklahoma will open its NCAA Regional at home in Norman Friday, May 15th. First up, it’s Binghamton for a 2:30 p.m. local time first pitch.