2024 WCWS finals preview: Breaking down Oklahoma-Texas - ESPN

For much of the 2024 softball season, an Oklahoma-Texas finale felt preordained. Oklahoma has been the sport's inevitable force, winning three straight national titles and five of the past seven. That the Sooners have lost seven games this year is a sign of regression by their standards.

Mike White's Longhorns, meanwhile, have been OU's equal from the very start of the season. The 2022 runners-up, beaten by the Sooners in the final series two years ago, had already defeated four top-10 teams by mid-February; in early April, they became the first Big 12 team since Missouri in 2011 to take a series off of the champs. They drew the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament.

This year had to end with Sooners-Longhorns. But it almost didn't.

Texas lost to rival Texas A&M in the first game of the super regionals and trailed 5-1 in the second. And when the Longhorns charged back to take an 8-5 lead, the Aggies tied it with a three-run home run in the bottom of the seventh. Texas had to gut out a nine-inning win, then survive a late comeback to win in Game 3 just to make it to Oklahoma City in the first place.

Oklahoma, meanwhile, was on the ropes and wobbly as late as about 4 p.m. ET on Tuesday afternoon. Needing to just win one of two games against the power-hitting Gators to get to the finals, the Sooners got knocked around 9-3 in the first game Monday — a loss that ended a 20-game NCAA tournament win streak — and fell behind 5-2 in the second. Kelly Maxwell, Oklahoma's ace, had given up just two home runs in her past 33 innings but gave up three in three innings to the Gators. But she steadied herself from there, and freshman Ella Parker, just one inning after getting decked in a collision at second base, knocked in the