Three parting thoughts from 16-seed Oregon's Super Regional victory over Liberty

For the first time in seven seasons under head coach Melyssa Lombardi, the Oregon Ducks are bound for Oklahoma City. After advancing through both the regionals and super regionals at Jane Sanders Stadium, Oregon will now head to the Women's College World Series for a shot to compete for a national title.

Although this past weekend's two-game sweep of Liberty was a little less dramatic than the Ducks' regional that had them backed into a corner before Dezianna Patmon's walk-off home run ended things, there was still plenty to be taken away from the Eugene Super Regional.

Before we jump ahead to preview potential matchups in Oklahoma City, let's take a look back to see what the biggest things were to come out of Oregon's matchup with Liberty.

1. Lyndsey Grein bounced back in a major way

Simply put, the Ducks' ace has been one of the most dominant pitchers in the country this season, landing her as a top 10 finalist for USA Softball's Player of the Year award. But over the last few weeks of the regular season, Grein saw her numbers spike, and not in a good way.

Through Oregon's regular-season series with UCLA in April, Grein had absolutely dominated opponents to the tune of a 1.15 ERA and a 0.871 WHIP across her first 134 ⅓ innings of the season. But over her next 28 ⅓ innings leading up to last weekend, she saw her numbers balloon to a 6.84 ERA and a 1.849 WHIP. Her strikeout stuff was still there, and had actually ticked up from 8.9 strikeouts per seven innings through the UCLA series to 10.3 K/7 after, but she was giving up more contact — and especially more hard contact — than ever before.

After being one of the stingiest pitchers in the country, allowing just 3.5 hits per seven innings, that jumped 9.5 H/7 after UCLA, while her home runs per seven innings increased by more than six times from 0.4 to 2.4 HR/7. It wasn't just her efficiency that had taken a step back, but her volume too, putting more on the shoulders of Oregon's other pitchers like Elise Sokolsky and Staci Chambers. After averaging over 3.5 innings per appearance over her first 37 outings of the year, Grein had seen that fall by over an inning her last 11 times out in the lead-up to supers.

All of that changed on Saturday, though. Grein had tossed two scoreless frames to start Friday's game before giving way to Sokolsky and Chambers to handle the bulk of the innings. That made her well-rested heading into Saturday, when she would deliver one of her best performances of the season under the brightest lights.

With a chance to send her team to the WCWS, Grein evicerated the Liberty lineup, allowing just one run in her first seven-inning complete game since she shut out Florida State in early March. Leadoff hitter Savannah Woodard tagged her for a solo shot to put the Flames ahead early in the first inning before Conference USA Player of the Year Rachel Roupe followed it up with a single. But Grein locked back in, fanning the side to end the inning and leave Roupe at first. That would be the last runner that Liberty would put on base until the seventh inning, as Grein absolutely dominated the Flames' hitters, at one point retiring 19 batters in a row.

While Grein's numbers have looked fantastic all season, this was a version of her that we haven't witnessed take the circle in a while. She pitched into the sixth inning for just the fourth time since the start of conference play, while her 10 strikeouts — the last one on three pitches to end the game — was her first time reaching double digits since she fanned 11 Washington Huskies in the Ducks' first game of Big Ten play.

Oregon will need the entirety of its staff to succeed in Oklahoma City, which was evident last weekend when Chambers' 4 ⅓ shutout innings of Stanford kept the Ducks in the game until Patmon walked things off. But at the end of the day, this team will go as far as Grein's right arm will take them. If this can be a sign that a return to form for one of the most dangerous hurlers in the country is here, it would be a massive boost for the Ducks as they head to the WCWS.

2. This offense is as explosive as any

While the end result of Saturday's contest may have been the most runs in a super regional game in program history, that's not how things appeared to be headed the entire time. Oregon held a 3-1 lead entering the fifth inning when catcher Emma Cox launched a three-run homer to add some insurance runs. But still, six runs isn't the blowout that this game eventually turned into.

That would come two innings later in the top of the seventh, when Oregon's offense exploded for seven runs to put the Flames to rest. The Ducks sent 11 batters to the plate as they hit around the lineup, singling three times with the bases loaded before Paige Sinicki cleared them for good with a triple off the wall in her final plate appearance at Jane Sanders Stadium.

The Ducks have had an explosive offense all season long, ranking second in the nation in total scoring through Friday's games while their average of nearly eight runs per game ranked as a top-five mark in the country. All season long, it has felt like this offense has been ready to explode at any moment, instantly changing the tide of any game.

Saturday's seventh was Oregon's 30th time scoring at least five runs in an inning this season, which has been able to turn losses into wins and close games into blowouts all year. The Ducks' offense can go off at any time, which is why they've been able to end 22 of their 53 wins this season early via mercy rule and have scored double-digit runs on 16 occasions.

With power bats in the lineup like Rylee McCoy, Stefini Ma'ake, and Patmon hitting behind on-base machines like the Luschar sisters and Sinicki, the Ducks have been able to utilize the long ball to put up runs in bunches this year. Oregon ranks among the top 15 teams in the country in total homers, but the key is the fact that when homering this season, the Ducks now sport a sparkling 42-0 record.

While they will be facing their toughest competition and some of the best arms that college softball has to offer when they head to Oklahoma City, it's clear that the Ducks' bats have the ability to change a game at any moment. Oregon will need both sides of the ball to come together to find success at the WCWS, and on offense, the Ducks have to take advantage with runners on base to put crooked numbers on the board

3. This season is a culmination of seven years of work

The last time the Ducks were headed to the WCWS was 2018, the final year under former head coach Mike White before he jumped ship to Texas. White had taken the program to new heights during his nine seasons with the Ducks, leading them to the WCWS five times, including four of his final five seasons. When he bounced for Texas, he left behind a team in utter disarray with a fanbase who had just experienced its greatest sustained run of success in program history.

With White gone, nearly the entire team hit the transfer portal, leaving Lombardi to inherit a roster with just a single scholarship player, outfielder Haley Cruse. Despite coming to a program with plenty of history, Lombardi had to build her team from scratch, a process that took some time.

The Ducks finished her debut season as head coach with a losing record for the first time in a decade. With just one scholarship pitcher on the roster, Virginia Tech transfer Jordan Dail tossed a ridiculous 248 innings while even players like Cruse chipped in with 1 ⅓ frames across three appearances.

Lombardi began to find her footing in 2020 when her team started 22-2, but that season would be cut short when spring sports were canceled due to the pandemic. By 2021, Oregon looked like the same program its fans had grown accustomed to under White, as Lombardi led the Ducks to a third-place finish in the Pac-12 before their season would ultimately end at the hands of White's Longhorns at the Austin Regional.

Constructing a team like the one that Oregon has put on the field this season isn't something that happens overnight. She continued to build strong teams that would reach the regionals in 2022 and 2024, and the super regionals for the first time in 2023, but it wasn't until this year that everything truly came together.

It took lots of hard work for Lombardi's team to get to where it is today, not just this year, but over the past seven years that she has led the program. It's no wonder, then, that after her Ducks' super regional win, the messages began to pour in from former players like Dail and Cruse, who had witnessed everything that it took to get to this point from the very beginning in 2019.

"It means so much because I think of all the other versions before Version 7 that pushed hard for us to get to where we needed to," Lombardi said after Saturday's win. "This would not be possible without any of our versions."

It's been a long season for the Ducks, filled with plenty of ups and a few downs along the way. But for Lombardi, it's been a long seven seasons, making this year the culmination of a process that started back in 2019.