By Charles Goldberg, Auburn Athletics
Box Score
OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — Emily Carosone, Tiffany Howard and Auburn say they’ll be happy to play another day of softball.
They’ll be happy to try to win the NCAA softball championship Wednesday.
Carosone hit a walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the eighth to lead Auburn to a dramatic 11-7 win over Oklahoma in Game 2 of the College World Series finals Tuesday. Howard robbed Oklahoma of a would-be two-run homer in the sixth when she reached over the fence to keep Auburn’s national title hopes alive.
Auburn, facing elimination, forced a winner-take-all championship game at 6 p.m. Wednesday on ESPN.
Auburn coach Clint Myers smiled at his own understatement after his team rallied from a 7-0 deficit.
“We have a very good offense and they’re going to swing the bats. If you’ve noticed, they like to do it late and make it exciting,” Myers said.
“We,” said third baseman Kasey Cooper, “like to make things interesting at Auburn.”
It took all of Auburn’s dramatics to cool off the hottest team in college softball, to snap Oklahoma’s 31-game winning streak. The Tigers improved to 58-11. Oklahoma fell to 56-8.
“We’re confident in our offensive abilities to come back,” Cooper said. “We’ve always been known for never quitting.”
Carosone was waiting for the opportunity to take one more swing at Oklahoma, and Auburn needed only to get Victoria Draper in from third. The pitch came in, and left as the game-winning grand slam.
“Right before I got in the box I was thinking, ‘Hit it hard because if I hit it hard and it went somewhere, Victoria was going to score no matter what,” Carosone said. “I don’t know about the pitch. It was just there.”
Rachael Walters came in and pitched five innings in relief and bailed out the Tigers, slowing down Oklahoma and setting up Auburn’s win. Makayla Martin pitched the final two and improved to 15-3.
Howard’s catch kept the game tied at 7-7.
Walters, the pitcher, was grateful.
“I owe Tiffany like a million steak dinners,” Walters said.
Auburn was down on the scoreboard, as in 7-0 in the second inning, but showed it had no intentions of quitting.
“It wasn’t difficult to go out there and just tell them to be Auburn and to be proud,” Myers said.
The Tigers came all the way back from a second-inning 7-0 deficit and tied the game in the fourth on a Cooper two-run homer.
Myers said he didn’t lose faith.
“It was 7-0 and we’ve only hit once. Basically, we went out there in the circle and had some words of encouragement,” he said. “We said, basically, there is so much of this game left. We can score bunches. We’ve got to play defense, we’ve got get people in circle back trusting we’re going to make plays and we know what we’re doing.”
It was a wild, wild game. Oklahoma scored six runs in top of the second. Auburn scored five in the bottom of the inning. When they sorted out all the hits and errors, the Sooners led 7-5 going to the third.
And that was the score going to the fourth.
The game started with Auburn doing un-Auburn things, like allowing six hits and committing two errors in the first two innings as Oklahoma took a 7-0 lead. The Sooners were more than happy to take advantage of the long ball, as in two home runs; and the small ball, scoring two runs on consecutive bunt singles.
But Auburn came right back.
Whitney Jordan blasted a 3-run homer to left, then Howard tripled to cut Oklahoma’s lead to 7-4. Cooper RBI single made it 7-5.
