She might be the best coach in college sports today, and this is how she keeps getting better

With apologies to Nick Saban, Patty Gasso might just be the most accomplished ball-sport coach in college athletics right now. 

In her 29th season leading Oklahoma's softball program, Gasso has won six national championships -- including five of the last 10, two of the last two, and is heavily favored to make it a three-peat next month. 

After going 56-4 en route to the 2021 crown, the 2022 team entered the season with "greatest team of all-time" hype. True softball experts can debate whether their results -- 59-3 with a national title -- lived up to that lofty expectation, but the 2023 team enters the Super Regional with No. 16 seed Clemson at 54-1. Oklahoma run-ruled all three opponents in last weekend's regional; OU's last 1-run game came on April 1. Since April 15, Oklahoma could have spotted every single opponent three runs and still won 15 of its 17 games.

Regardless of whether or not Gasso wears the gold medal for Best Active Coach or if she's simply on the medal stand, she's clearly a master of the profession, and a Hall of Famer in waiting. 

In an interview with the Oklahoma Breakdown podcast, Gasso, 60, explained the two ways she continues to improve her craft. One is new, and fairly obvious: analytics. Her staff supplies her with the numbers, and Gasso implements them as she sees fit. 

The other way is as old as time: she spends 1-on-1 time with her players. 

"As I get older and players get younger, I started to feel a little bit distant. It's important for me to continue to have relationships with players, so I did something the last couple years a little bit new where I would just take each one out individually for a lunch or a breakfast and just let them get to know me, ask me questions, I would ask them questions," she said. "Nothing to do with softball."

"I just wanted them to know I'm someone they can talk to, not to feel intimidated or afraid. It's a very comfortable environment for me, I enjoy being around them, I think they feel the same."

It's hard to know when exactly "the last few years" begins, but since softball returned from the covid shutdown of 2020, Oklahoma is 169-8 with two national titles and counting.

Oklahoma would have the best players in the country whether or not Gasso went to breakfast with them, but she clearly believes that fostering the coach-player relationship beyond the transactional nature it can sometimes fall into is a key to the Sooners' terrifying level of success.