Oklahoma opens season atop Big 12 poll

Sooners return five All-Big 12 players from the 2019 season, but were picked to finish just ahead of Texas

John E. Hoover | Jan 21, 2021

Lynnsie Elam (left) and Shannon Saile / OU Athletics

The headline isn’t that Oklahoma has been picked to win its ninth consecutive Big 12 Conference championship.

It’s that somebody else received votes in the preseason coaches poll — enough to nearly topple the Sooners from the top spot.

Texas got three first-place votes and finished with 33 voting points, just one vote and one point behind OU (four first-place votes, 34 points).

The preseason poll was announced Thursday, and it’s the ninth year in a row and 12th time in the last 13 seasons that Oklahoma was picked to win the Big 12.

Oklahoma State finished third with 26 points, ahead of Baylor (21), Texas Tech (14), Iowa State (13) and Kansas (6).

The 2020 season was canceled by Coronavirus, so OU remains the only team in league history to go undefeated in back-to-back seasons (2018-2019).

The Sooners are undefeated in their last 54 conference series (50-0-4 in that span) and have not lost a conference series since 2011.

Oklahoma returns five All-Big 12 selections from 2019: redshirt senior pitcher Giselle Juarez, senior utility player Jocelyn Alo and junior utility player Grace Green were first-team All-Big 12, and redshirt senior pitcher Shannon Saile was second-team. Infielder Grace Lyons joined Green on the All-Freshman Team.

Green was also named Big 12 Freshman of the Year and head coach Patty Gasso was selected as the league's Coach of the Year.

The Sooners in 2020 were 20-4 before the season was canceled and finished the year ranked No. 6 in the final NFCA poll.

OU has won four national championships and been to the Women’s College World Series 13 times under Gasso, who is a 12-time Big 12 coach of the year.

Published Jan 21, 2021

JOHN E. HOOVER

John is an award-winning journalist whose work spans five decades in Oklahoma, with multiple state, regional and national awards as a sportswriter at various newspapers. During his newspaper career, John covered the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma State Cowboys, the Arkansas Razorbacks and much more. In 2016, John changed careers, migrating into radio and launching a YouTube channel, and has built a successful independent media company, DanCam Media. From there, John has written under the banners of Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Fan Nation and a handful of local and national magazines while hosting daily sports talk radio shows in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and statewide. John has also spoken on Capitol Hill in Oklahoma City in a successful effort to put more certified athletic trainers in Oklahoma public high schools. Among the dozens of awards he has won, John most cherishes his national "Beat Writer of the Year" from the Associated Press Sports Editors, Oklahoma's "Best Sports Column" from the Society of Professional Journalists, and Two "Excellence in Sports Medicine Reporting" Awards from the National Athletic Trainers Association. John holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from East Central University in Ada, OK. Born and raised in North Pole, Alaska, John played football and wrote for the school paper at Ada High School in Ada, OK. He enjoys books, movies and travel, and lives in Broken Arrow, OK, with his wife and two kids.