Junior pitcher Delainey Everett's seven shutout innings Sunday sent defending four-time national champion Oklahoma home from the Super Regionals, and with it came an ending that hadn't happened in over a decade: the Sooners, one of college softball's most dominant dynasties, will miss the Women's College World Series for the first time since 2015.
But the real story belonged to Mississippi State. The Bulldogs advanced to the World Series for the first time in program history, pulling off a stunning upset that silenced the crowd of Oklahoma fans who'd expected another championship run. After knocking out unseeded Oregon a week earlier just to reach the Super Regionals—their second time ever making that cut—the Bulldogs simply didn't yield. They won Game 1 on Friday 11-9, lost Game 2 on Saturday 7-1, then sealed it with that 6-0 shutout victory Sunday that marked the first time Oklahoma had been shut out in 399 games.
Everett's performance was especially remarkable given that she'd pitched just 13.1 innings during the regular season due to injury. "An underdog is still a freakin' dog," she said on the ESPN broadcast, her voice still hoarse from the intensity of the moment. "That's what I'm talking about. We knew it, we were on the bus, oh my gosh. Everything that we've worked for came through today, and we ain't done yet."
The Bulldogs had been written off by their own margins. They hadn't scored six runs in a single game since April 19, and only twice since the start of April had they reached that threshold. Sunday's six-run performance represented the kind of offensive surge that felt impossible given their season trajectory. Coach Samantha Ricketts had spoken in recent press conferences about "priming the pump," about building toward May. Her team had listened.
For Oklahoma, the loss stung deeper because of how dominant they'd been. The Sooners had won four consecutive national championships from 2021 through 2024—a record-breaking streak. Freshman catcher Kendall Wells had just set a new freshman home run record with 39 dingers. But pitching unraveled when it mattered most. In the Super Regionals, pitchers Miali Guachino, Audrey Lowry, and Sydney Berzon combined to allow 18 runs—more than Oklahoma had surrendered in any regular-season SEC series all year.
"They're going to do some things at the World Series. I'm definitely going to be a fan of that," said Oklahoma coach Patty Gasso with grace after the loss, acknowledging that her former pupil Ricketts had engineered something special. "We just kept taking big swings over and over and over again. We needed not one hero, but we needed 20."
Mississippi State will compete for the national championship in Oklahoma City alongside Oklahoma's successor programs: Alabama (the No. 1 overall seed), Nebraska, Arkansas, Tennessee, UCLA, Texas Tech, and Texas. The Red Raiders punched their own ticket with a wild 16-7 Game 3 victory over Florida in Gainesville that saw seven homers and six pitching changes. Texas, the defending champion, survived their own Super Regional against Arizona State.
But the narrative belongs to Ricketts and her Bulldogs, who proved that even established dynasties can fall when an underdog team finally finds its voice.