SUNDAY, JUNE 12 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ M2 D3
BY ANDY KOSTKAkansas city, mo. — Putting hy-
perfocus on any individual swing
can lead to the type of pressure the
Orioles have tried to avoid placing
on Adley Rutschman, but there’s
no avoiding it — not when all of
Baltimore searches for a sign that
Rutschman can find his footing at
this level.
The top prospect in baseball has
been in the majors for three weeks.
He entered Saturday afternoon’s
game against the Kansas City Roy-
als with a .153 batting average and
an on-base-plus-slugging percent-
age plus of just 32, with 100 being
average. And yet in his three games
in Kansas City, the swings have
deserved the intense scrutiny for
how good they have looked.
Rutschman’s performance Sat-
urday was the best of his three-
week-old major league career. He
finished with three hits in the
Orioles’ bounce-back 6-4 victory.
Tyler Wells delivered Balti-
more’s first quality start in
10 games, and Tyler Nevin blasted
the go-ahead, three-run home run
in the sixth. But Rutschman was
the main attraction.
He has shown in three straight
days what he can do with a bat in
his hands, no matter how small
the sample size might be.
First was a lineout Saturday,
leaving his bat at 106.2 mph before
finding a glove. Then came a dou-
ble into the right-center field gap,
his second straight game with a
two-bagger. In the sixth inning,
Rutschman lashed a single to left
at 110 mph, his hardest-hit ball yet.
The latter knock set up Nevin’s
three-run blast for a lead Austin
Hays added onto one inning later
with an RBI single.
In his final at-bat, Rutschman
turned on a 98.6-mph four-seam
fastball for his third double in two
days, with the ball leaving his bat
at 108 mph.
— Baltimore SunRutschmanenjoys hisbest dayat the plateORIOLES 6,
ROYALS 4BY FRED GOODALLtampa — Steven Stamkos scored
two goals, and the two-time de-
fending champion Tampa Bay
Lightning is headed to the Stan-
ley Cup finals for the third
straight year after beating the
New York Rangers, 2-1, in Game 6
of the Eastern Conference finals
Saturday night.
Stamkos put the Lightning
ahead for good in the third period
just 21 seconds after New York’s
Frank Vatrano scored on the pow-
er play with the Lightning cap-
tain in the penalty box for hold-
ing.
Nikita Kucherov and Ondrej
Palat assisted on the winner with
61 / 2 minutes left, with the puck
deflecting off Stamkos’s knee into
the net after Rangers goalie Igor
Shesterkin stopped the initial
shot. Stamkos also scored on a
wrist shot from the top of the
right circle midway through the
second period.
Andrei Vasilevskiy finished
with 20 saves for the Lightning,
which won the series 4-2 — rat-
tling off four straight victories
after losing the first two games on
the road — to advance to the
Stanley Cup finals against the
Colorado Avalanche.
Game 1 is Wednesday night in
Denver.
The Lightning is the first team
to make three consecutive ap-
pearances in the Cup finals since
Edmonton did it from 1983 to- It is trying to become the
first to win three straight champi-
onships since the New York Is-
landers claimed four in a row
from 1980 to 1983.
The Rangers, down 3-2 in a
series for the third consecutive
round, were 5-0 in elimination
games this postseason before Sat-
urday night.
— Associated Press
STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFST ampa Bay
earns third
consecutive
finals trip
LIGHTNING 2,
RANGERS 12 2-year-old guard.
“This is a tough series for him
to score because of Boston’s size
and athleticism,” Kerr explained
about Green, who has averaged
4.3 points and has missed all nine
of his three-point attempts. “But
he’s still impacting the game at a
huge level.”
Green finished with nine
rebounds and eight assists, and
Thompson drilled a pair of timely
three-pointers in the final
quarter. They did just enough to
propel the Warriors to a win and
possibly secure the momentum
ahead of what could be the series-
defining Game 5 in San
Francisco. Curry did everything
else.
“Proud of everybody in terms
of our physicality, our focus,
perseverance throughout the
game,” Curry said in
complimenting the team when it
would have been appropriate to
break his hand by patting himself
on the back.
“Two and two is way better
than 3-1 going home.”
And in this series, one Wardell
Stephen Curry is greater than all.in their championship DNA —
which they bring up even without
being asked — but know deep
down that this team isn’t the
same as those in 2015, 2017 or- Thompson, in his post-
injury recovery, hasn’t
rediscovered the marksman
touch that once made the Golden
State backcourt the most feared
from 23 feet 9 inches and beyond.
Even more troubling for the
Warriors, the final piece to their
Big Three, Green, has been
unplayable on the offensive end.
When Marcus Thompson II,
the venerable Bay Area
columnist, asked Warriors Coach
Steve Kerr about his substitution
pattern (“How much gangsta did
you have to summon to sit
him?”), the question was about
not playing Curry at the
beginning of the fourth quarter.
But Kerr also needed a certain
amount of gangsta — or just
eyesight — to send Green to the
bench way before the midway
point of the fourth. Kerr kept
Green there until the 3:41 mark
in favor of offense-for-defense
substitutions with Poole, the
recorded 40 points and
10 rebounds in a Finals game.
One has his silhouette as the
NBA’s logo, and the other simply
goes by his nickname — Magic.
Curry joined that list with his
43 points (on 14-for-26 shooting,
which included seven three-
pointers) and 10 rebounds in the
Warriors’ series-tying victory in
Game 4. In the wee hours of
Saturday morning, one voice
after another joined the
hallelujah chorale in praise of
him. And the truth in their words
seemed to suggest their
dependence on one man —
something the Warriors, once
defined by their “strength in
numbers,” never had to do before
during a Finals run.
“We wouldn’t have won
without him,” Jordan Poole said.
“All you can do is watch. When
Steph has the ball sometimes, you
just watch and see what he does,”
Andrew Wiggins confessed.
“To go out there and put us on
his back, I mean, we got to help
him out on Monday,” Klay
Thompson observed.
The Warriors all seem to trustthat should be rewarded with a
promotion, elevating the young
Celtics as a start-up from Suffolk
County to a basketball empire
that’s primed to secure the
franchise’s 18th banner sooner
rather than later. The better team
should prevail in this series.
But again, Wardell.
Curry is disrupting the logic
that a seven-game series favors
the more complete team, that a
singular star can’t win it all by
himself. While he may not be
LeBron James in 2007, dragging
guys such as Daniel Gibson and
Sasha Pavlovic to the Finals,
Curry has made it seem as if his
team will win the title if he can
keep up playing solitaire for a few
more games.
“Came out and showed why
he’s one of the best players who’s
ever played,” teammate
Draymond Green said after
watching Curry’s performance in
Game 4, “and why this
organization has been able to ride
him to so much success. It’s
absolutely incredible.”
Only two other point guards in
the history of the league hadThe Celtics have been the
better team in three of the four
games in this series. They have
the better defense, a clamping,
physical brand that encourages
well-intentioned shooters to
become over-dribblers. With
center Robert Williams III
lording over the paint and four
lanky defenders in front of him,
Boston has forced Golden State to
roam for vacant spots and find
little hope around the perimeter.
The Celtics’ overall depth is
better, and they’re getting
consistent contributions from
their best players. Even when
first-team all-NBA player Jayson
Tatum struggles through
shooting lows, he’s not above
breaking into a full sprint, as he
did in Game 4, to save a loose ball
and sliding into the sneakers of
his teammates on the sideline.
Point guard Marcus Smart also
showed his willingness to nearly
break his back Friday night, going
all-in to sell a flop, just to get a
whistle.
These are the winning plays
BUCKNER FROM D1
CANDACE BUCKNER
Balanced, deep Celtics are being stymied by the o ne-man Warriors
KYLE TERADA/ASSOCIATED PRESSStephen Curry had 43 points and 1 0 rebounds in Game 4 as the Warriors tied the series, joining Jerry West and Magic Johnson as the only point guards to hit the 40-10 mark.
BY GLYNN A. HILLAfter winning games by 19, 20
and 21 runs, the Oklahoma soft-
ball team offered a more subtle
showing during its Thursday vic-
tory over rival Texas, a 10-5 win
that secured a second straight
national title for a team whose
achievements are extraordinarily
extensive.
Indeed, numbers help capture
the historic quality of the Soon-
ers.
The journey to the school’s
sixth national title spanned
62 games — 59 of them wins and
40 ended by mercy rule. It had
155 home runs, 33 shutouts and
eight no-hitters — a reflection of
its hitting prowess as much as the
skill of its pitching staff.
Along the way, star slugger
Jocelyn Alo smashed her NCAA
career record 122nd home run —
and a host of other records. All-
American Tiare Jennings set a
Women’s College World Series
record with 15 RBI. And freshman
phenom Jordy Bahl finished with
a 22-1 record, a 1.16 ERA and
207 strikeouts in 145^1 / 3 innings.
Those stats and superlatives
invited questions about Okla-
homa’s place among the best in
the school and sport’s history.
Some players avoided direct an-
swers after the win, but Coach
Patty Gasso flipped the question
on inquiring minds.
“I’m going to let you decide,”
Gasso told reporters. “You guys
all have the stats and all that stuff.
I could rank them very, very high,
if not the highest, because every-
thing they do looks so easy to me
and they do it so fast.”
Oklahoma lost three games
this season, including one to
then-No. 18 Texas in mid-April
and another to a top-10 Okla-
homa State team a month later in
the Big 12 title game. The latter, a
4-3 defeat, represented one of the
team’s lowest scoring outputs this
season, and it marked the first
time the Sooners had not won the
regular season and tournament
titles since 2012.
“This team is not happy with
the defeat,” Gasso said after the
loss. “That is something they al-
ways seem to bounce back even
stronger. They did that at Texas.
They want to win championships.
When someone takes it from
them, they respond.”
Oklahoma responded once re-gionals began, crushing its next
six opponents by a 113-11 margin
— minus a 7-3 defeat to UCLA in
the first game of the semifinal,
which, on the brink of elimina-
tion, the Sooners avenged with a
15-0 drubbing of the Bruins later
that day.
Why focus on the losses? Be-
cause they’re easier to count than
the records.
Alo was a prolific record revis-
er during this year’s College
World Series. Entering Thurs-
day’s game, she held at least five
WCWS records — or shared them
with Jennings. She’s the only
player in NCAA Division I softballhistory to lead the country in
home runs in three seasons.
Her team had more home runs,
more total bases and more runs
scored than any other in a WCWS
game. And that’s after the Soon-
ers opened the season with a 38-0
record, the best start in Division I
history. This season, the Sooners
led the country in batting average
(.371), ERA (1.05), home runs per
game (2.5), runs per game (9.34)
and slugging percentage (.734).
With stars such as Alo and
Jennings, who led Division I in
RBI this year (Alo’s 85 were sec-
ond, and senior Grace Lyons tied
for sixth with 70), Oklahoma’sfirepower was a well-known com-
modity before this season. If there
was a question as to whether the
team could repeat, it centered on
its pitching after the program
returned just one of its primary
pitchers (Nicole May).
But Gasso reloaded with Bahl,
who was named an all-American
this season, and Hope Trautwein,
a North Texas transfer who last
year recorded the first all-strike-
out perfect game in NCAA Divi-
sion I history. All three rank in the
nation’s top 10 in ERA, led by
Trautwein (second), Bahl (fifth)
and May (10th). For May’s part,
she earned the 20-0 win against
Texas A&M on May 22, which sent
the Sooners to the super regional
and was the largest margin of
victory in NCAA tournament his-
tory.
UCLA became the only team in
Division I softball history to win
three consecutive championships
from 1988 to 1990. Alo, one of five
“super seniors” on the team after
being granted an additional year
of eligibility because of the pan-
demic, departs. But Jennings is a
sophomore, as is Jayda Coleman,
whose leaping robbery helped
secure the school’s fifth title in
the past nine World Series.
When asked where the 2022
Oklahoma softball team fits in
the annals of softball history, Alo
was more definitive than her
teammates. But she left the door
open.
“I would say with me being a
senior, I think this is the best
team,” Alo said. “But one thing
about Sooner softball — and I’ve
seen it year in and year out — is
they just continue to get better. I
don’t know what holds next year,
but I know that they could be a
run for the best team, too.”After 59-3 season, Sooners make case as top softball team everBRIAN BAHR/GETTY IMAGES
The Sooners had 155 home runs, 33 shutouts and eight no-hitters en route to their sixth national title.