OKLAHOMA CITY — The way Texas had been flirting with perfection and coasting through the first three games of this Women’s College World Series, one might assume the Longhorns softball team would eventually face a hiccup sooner or later.

Instead it suffered a hemorrhage in Wednesday night's 8-3 loss to Oklahoma.

The top-seeded Longhorns had better stop the bleeding quickly or the Sooners will be celebrating their unprecedented fourth consecutive national championship before Texas knows what hit it.

For sure, OU looked every bit the dynastic team that has pulverized the competition and won 22 of its last 23 games in this event.

Until Wednesday night, Texas had been dominant itself, and it was coming off three straight shutouts — over Stanford twice and Florida. That ended abruptly when the Sooners plated two runs just two batters into the game as Tiare Jennings blasted her 11th career WCWS home run over the left field wall after a hit batter by Texas freshman Teagan Kavan.

OU would add two more deep flies from Kinzie Hansen and Kasidi Pickering in a three-run third inning to build a 5-1 lead and give ace Kelly Maxwell all the cushion she would need in this first game of the best-of-three championship series.

Texas didn't look right from the start

As mighty as the 58-7 Sooners looked, this could well become a best of two. History favors them as well because the winner of Game 1 in this round eventually claims the title 78% of the time.

These Sooners are an embarrassment of riches, flush with a strong lineup with 122 home runs from all over Patty Gasso’s lineup and full of confidence with Maxwell (23-2) atop the rotation. There may need to be an investigation into how this crew has lost seven games. If they’re not invincible, they’re the next best thing.

They were certainly that powerful and that precise in splattering Texas and putting themselves on the precipice of their eighth national crown overall.

The Longhorns? They’re seeking their first and faced an uphill climb, having to win two straight Thursday and Friday.

So is OU in Texas’ head? The Sooners sure appear intimidating.

“We’re just doing our job out here,” said Hansen, who has 22 career RBIs in the WCWS alone. “Our goal isn't to go out there and kind of get in their face and intimidate them like that. Our goal is to kind of just hammer them in the way that we know how.”

Oh, they hammered all right.

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Starting with Jenkins’ homer to perk up an already lively Devon Park crowd of 12,317, the relentless Sooners worked over Kavan and three relievers for nine hits. Six of those were for extra bases, including three doubles.

For the Longhorns’ part, they said they don’t fear the Sooners, but the results speak for themselves.

Finally, someone caught up to Texas' Teagan Kavan

It doesn’t hurt that OU has 10 seniors on this squad with five in its starting lineup along with one junior. Texas counters with three sophomores and two freshmen, all of whom are new to this environment.

“It means a lot ’cause there's a lot of nerves here,” Gasso said. "If you get to a place where you can't control it, you're going to lose opportunities, you're going to lose at-bats, you're going to make errors, you're going to throw uncompetitive, noncompetitive pitches because you're letting things take over.”

Kavan, who had been utterly brilliant in back-to-back one-hit shutouts here, fizzled early. The right-hander didn’t have her usual command and faced only 15 batters, eight of whom reached base.

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Texas’ batters, meanwhile, swung wildly at pitches far out of the strike zone and often in the dirt to help Maxwell stay out of trouble other than Mia Scott’s solo home run in the second and a pair of bloop RBI singles by Katie Stewart and Joley Mitchell.

“We have a lot of respect for them,” Mitchell said. “It's not necessarily that we're intimidated by them. I think it's just that we have to stay within ourselves. We don't need to worry about anything else.”

But their play suggests they’re a bit uptight. Who’d blame ’em since OU holds a 15-3 advantage in matchups with Texas over the past four years?

“We weren't good in all phases of the game,” UT coach Mike White said. “I shouldn't say good, but we weren't good enough. We didn't play well to be able to hold them down.”

Loss leaves Longhorns with no room for error

They played nothing like the loose, confident bunch they had been as the free-swinging Sooners set the tone early, put the pressure on the Longhorns and kept it there. Texas pitchers had just one perfect inning as OU scored in five of its seven innings.

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The burnt orange had almost as many errors (three) as hits (four). Reese Atwood, the Texas slugger with a staggering 90 RBIs, continues to press. She has yet to drive in a run and has just two hits — including an infield single — in nine at-bats. Her slump has to be eating away at her because it spilled over into her defense with two errors on a wild pickoff try at third and a sleepy play in which she confused the number of outs and flipped the ball high in the air to the mound, thinking a strikeout had ended the inning, and allowing a stolen base.

How can White snap her out of the doldrums?

“Wish I had the answer for that,” he said of his star player. “She's been the one that's got us through the season. Been really steady for us. This game, it's tough. It can be awfully humbling sometimes when things happen. There's not always a big fix for those things.”

Or even a little fix.

“I think that just made us put a lot of pressure on ourselves to succeed and execute,” Stewart said. “Just remembering that we're a good team also and that we're meant to be here.”

She’s right.

This is an outstanding 55-9 Texas team that owns the No. 1 seed in this tournament, beat Oklahoma two of three in Austin and leveled the field in its first week in this town. The Sooners, on the other hand, have overwhelmed many a team in what is virtually a home setting. But they’re not counting trophies before they’re put in the cabinet.

“I know Texas; they're not no softies,” Hansen said. “They're not going to roll over. Coach White does a great job getting them pumped up. Yeah, if they feel that way, they're going to come out and try to bow up to us, for sure.”

They really have no other choice. It’s either bow up to the machine that is OU or bow out.

WCWS championship series

No. 1 Texas vs. No. 2 Oklahoma, Devon Park in Oklahoma City, ESPN

Game 1: Oklahoma 8, Texas 3; Game 2: 7 p.m. Thursday; Game 3, if needed: 7 p.m. Friday

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Intimidating Oklahoma softball pounds uptight Texas in Game 1 of WCWS