Because it seems, there have been a number of methods to finish the Oklahoma softball dynasty.
Coach Mike White and Texas methodically laid a basis, brick by brick, first attending to tremendous regionals, then reaching the Girls’s School World Sequence championship sequence twice earlier than falling to the Sooners each instances. With a rugged, skilled workforce that snapped out of a late-season funk on the final doable second, the Longhorns took down Oklahoma for the primary time ever within the WCWS on Saturday, snagging a 4-2 win on their approach to a 3rd championship sequence in 4 years.
Texas Tech, in the meantime, simply went out and signed the most effective participant within the nation final summer time. That labored, too. NiJaree Canady led the Crimson Raiders to their first WCWS this season, permitting only one run in two wins, then outlasted Oklahoma’s Sam Landry in an exciting 3-2 victory on Monday night time.
A breathless and thrilling WCWS, one which has featured walk-off residence runs, pitching duels, late-night extra-inning affairs and, now, a fallen champion, will get the becoming ending it deserves.
Texas and Texas Tech will meet for the nationwide title in a best-of-three sequence beginning Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN. It is going to be the primary title for whoever prevails.
Let’s preview the championship sequence!
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The fundamentals | Final assembly
How did Kavan bounce again?
Methods to hit Canady’s pitch
Prediction
The fundamentals
Texas Longhorns
Coach: Mike White (seventh 12 months)
File: 54-11 (9-6 vs. different WCWS groups)
The Longhorns completed third of their first SEC marketing campaign, however after a spectacular 39-3 begin, they entered the postseason having gone simply 7-7 of their final 14 video games. After spending an excellent chunk of the season ranked No. 1 within the nation, they drew simply the No. 6 seed within the NCAA event.
Postseason path (8-1):
Regionals: def. Jap Illinois (10-2), def. Michigan (16-4), def. UCF (9-0)
Tremendous regionals: misplaced to No. 11 Clemson (7-4), def. No. 11 Clemson (7-5), def. No. 11 Clemson (6-5)
WCWS: def. No. 3 Florida (3-0), def. No. 2 Oklahoma (4-2), def. No. 7 Tennessee (2-0)
Runners on second and third with no outs within the backside of the eighth. In MLB, that situation produces a run over 80% of the time, and that is what ace Teagan Kavan was dealing with towards a smoking-hot Clemson workforce in a must-win Sport 2 within the Austin Tremendous Regional. It had rapidly begun to appear like a “peaked too early” form of season for each Texas and Kavan. However she generated a strikeout, a lineout and a groundout to flee the jam.
The Longhorns small-balled a few runs within the prime of the tenth inning, and Kavan closed out a 5⅔-inning, no-run reduction efficiency after getting out of yet another potential jam on the backside of the tenth.
Texas survived Sport 3 towards Clemson and, given life as soon as extra, shifted again into gear in Oklahoma Metropolis. Kavan has been the most effective pitcher within the WCWS (17 innings, 0.41 ERA, no extra-base hits allowed), and the Longhorns ruthlessly went 3-0 towards a loaded prime half of the bracket.
Texas Tech
Coach: Gerry Glasco (first 12 months)
File: 53-12 (3-2 vs. different WCWS groups)
After signing a record-setting NIL deal to play in Lubbock, Canady has been nearly as good as marketed all season, main the nation in wins (33), ERA (0.90) and each batting common allowed (0.153) and slugging proportion allowed (0.221). By means of late March, Tech was nonetheless simply 24-9 general, having scored both zero or one run in 5 of its 9 losses. Because the Crimson Raiders’ late March sequence loss to South Carolina, nonetheless, they’re 29-3, they usually have but to lose within the NCAA event.
Postseason path (8-0):
Regionals: def. Brown (6-0), def. Mississippi State (10-1), def. Mississippi State (9-6)
Tremendous regionals: def. No. 5 Florida State (3-0), def. No. 5 Florida State (2-1)
WCWS: def. Ole Miss (1-0), def. No. 9 UCLA (3-1), def. No. 2 Oklahoma (3-2)
The Tech offense has improved down the stretch, and whereas it is nonetheless merely good and never nice, it has backed Canady with a number of runs in seven of eight postseason video games. And he or she would not have a tendency to wish greater than that. In 4 video games towards seeded opponents, Tech has scored 11 runs and allowed simply 4. Canady led Stanford to the nationwide semifinals in every of the previous two seasons, however in 4 WCWS losses for Canady, the Cardinal have been shut out 3 times (together with twice by Texas’ Kavan final 12 months). She has gotten extra help than that this time round, and it has made a world of distinction.
Maybe most encouragingly, after Canady allowed a game-tying, two-run residence run within the prime of the seventh towards Oklahoma on Monday night — the Sooners’ bats did not produce sufficient runs in OKC this 12 months, however they nonetheless crammed their “dramatic seventh-inning homers” quota — Tech instantly responded, grinding out a run within the backside of the seventh to win anyway.
1:52
Texas Tech shocks the softball world, upsets Oklahoma
Scott Van Pelt reacts to Texas Tech’s unbelievable upset over Oklahoma to achieve their first ever Girls’s School World Sequence Championship Sequence.
The Crimson Raiders got here to the WCWS as underdogs, however at this level, they’ve the arrogance of title favorites.
Wanting again at this 12 months’s conferences
Texas went 2-0 towards Tech within the Bevo Traditional in February. No less than a kind of wins may grow to be fairly related.
Feb. 14 (Austin): Texas 2, Texas Tech 1 (9 innings)
Starters: Kavan (9 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 18 Ok, 1 BB) vs. Canady (8 IP, 7 H, 1 ER, 11 Ok, 1 BB)
Key hitting performances: Texas’ Mia Scott: 2-for-3 with a double and an RBI; Texas’ Ashton Maloney: 1-for-3 with a double and a run scored; Tech’s Mihyia Davis: 2-for-4
We received an early-season title-series preview, and Kavan put up a record-setting efficiency. Tech went forward 1-0 within the fourth on an RBI single from Anya German, however a Scott double drove in Ashton Maloney within the fifth to ship the sport to further innings. Canady was after all wonderful, however Kavan struck out a career-best 18 batters, and the highest three hitters within the Tech order — Davis, Alana Johnson and Lauren Allred — struck out 9 instances between them. Within the backside of the ninth, Joley Mitchell scored on a throwing error, and the Horns prevailed.
Feb. 16 (Austin): Texas 11, Texas Tech 0 (5 innings)
Starters: Kavan (4 IP, 6 H, 0 ER, 5 Ok, 1 BB) vs. Samantha Lincoln (0.0 IP, 1 H, 2 ER, 1 BB)
Key hitting performances: Texas’ Katie Stewart: 3-for-3 with a HR, a double, 5 RBIs and a pair of runs; Texas’ Reese Atwood: 1-for-1 with a HR, an RBI, 2 BB and three runs; Texas’ Joley Mitchell: 1-for-2 with a triple, 2 RBIs and a run scored; Tech’s Davis: 2-for-3
With Canady resting on this matchup, it isn’t fairly as related — Texas batters are most likely not going to see somebody aside from Canady within the coming days until one thing goes haywire. That stated, Tech batters did get just a few extra cracks at Kavan and did little or no with them.
Total, Kavan pitched 13 innings towards the Crimson Raiders this season and allowed only one earned run and 10 hits with almost two strikeouts per inning. That was a pleasant rebound for her after a few iffy performances towards Tech final season, however apart from Demi Elder (2-for-5 with 4 RBIs towards Kavan), not one of the gamers who have been respectable towards her in 2024 are nonetheless within the Crimson Raiders’ lineup.
How did Teagan Kavan flip it again on?
For a short time, it appeared as if the proverbial SEC grind was catching as much as each Texas and Kavan. After a 39-3 begin, the Longhorns went 7-7 from April 12 via the SEC event, and Kavan fairly clearly misplaced her edge.
(* GB/FB = floor ball-to-fly ball ratio)
Kavan gave up three runs in 4 innings in a 4-1 loss to Tennessee, then allowed a mixed eight runs (5 earned) in higher-scoring wins over LSU (7-3 and 6-5) the following weekend. Oklahoma completely walloped her in a three-game sweep in Norman — she gave up six earned runs in 2⅓ innings in a 7-6 loss, then eight in 2 innings in a 9-8 loss — and within the following weeks, Ole Miss scored six, Michigan scored 4 and Clemson scored 5 towards her. She was nibbling an excessive amount of, lacking the strike zone extra, getting herself into extra hitter’s counts and permitting far too many baserunners.
On the WCWS, that has all modified. Again at Devon Park, the place she had two good outings towards Canady and Stanford in 2024, she reverted to kind. She’s getting forward of hitters once more, she’s retaining the ball within the strike zone however various her places higher, and he or she’s merely not letting batters get any good wooden on the ball by any means.
Listed here are the hit places for Florida and Oklahoma — the groups that completed the season ranked second and fourth in residence runs — in Kavan’s first two WCWS video games this season. (She got here in in reduction towards Tennessee on Monday after No. 2 pitcher Mac Morgan pitched 4 scoreless innings.)
Of 56 Sooners and Gator batters confronted, solely about six made genuinely threatening contact, and all six flew out to middle or proper area. Oklahoma and Florida have extremely highly effective lineups, and the Sooners had throttled Kavan fairly properly, each in April and in final season’s WCWS. She compelled each the Gators and Sooners to accept singles.
Now Kavan faces a Tech lineup she shut down twice in February. Tech has been in a position to generate runs — although not often a ton of them (and nearly none towards Kavan) — in quite a lot of methods. This is not an extremely deep batting order, however the Crimson Raiders have somewhat little bit of pace, energy and persistence.
Mihyia Davis, 4-for-7 towards Kavan again in February, leads the workforce in complete bases (123), stolen bases (26) and runs scored (64), and he or she’s second in extra-base hits (21, together with 10 doubles and 6 triples). She’s a strong chaos agent on the prime of the order. Behind her, No. 3 hitter Lauren Allred is a strong doubles hitter (she’s second on the workforce with a 1.071 OPS), and Canady herself, the cleanup hitter, leads the workforce with a 1.121 OPS and 11 residence runs in simply 101 at-bats. She has three postseason homers, although she’s simply 1-for-8 with a double and a stroll within the WCWS. The underside half of the order, in the meantime, with gamers like Alana Johnson and catcher Victoria Valdez, principally simply tries to take in pitches earlier than turning issues again over to Davis on the prime.
Success towards Kavan was arduous to return by in February, and with Kavan elevating her sport in Oklahoma Metropolis, that may stay the case. But when there’s comfort right here for the Crimson Raiders, it is that their ace may preserve Tech in video games lengthy sufficient for the batters to determine one thing out.
How do you hit a NiJaree Canady pitch?
It is simply jaw-dropping how a lot Canady continues to stay as much as the hype. She now has made 11 WCWS appearances in three seasons, and in 65⅔ innings pitched she has allowed simply 37 hits with a 1.18 ERA and 77 strikeouts. When her workforce offers her any run help by any means, she wins, and it is patently unfair that she has hit as many residence runs this season (11) as she has allowed.
When it comes to each retaining opponents off the bases and giving up little energy, she has been the most effective pitcher within the sport this season.
The historical past of sports activities is plagued by tales of gamers signing prolific contracts however failing to ship on them. Canady, nonetheless, signed a jaw-dropping NIL deal — one which actually shifted paradigms for ladies’s sports activities as an entire — after which merely went out and earned her cash, begin after begin.
It is arduous to determine one of the simplest ways to quantify Canady’s dominance as a result of it is so thorough. So, let’s truly have a look at the stats differently: When somebody has success towards Canady, what does it appear like? Heading into her Monday night time outing towards Oklahoma, here is the place batters have gotten their hits towards Canady:
The best-handed Canady permits almost the identical general batting stats towards right- and left-handed batters (she has allowed a .450 OPS towards lefties and a .437 OPS towards righties), however she offers up vastly totally different contact towards them:
Canady vs. lefties: .173 batting common allowed, 36.4% strikeout charge, 2.5% BB charge, 4.07 pitches per batter confronted, 0.8% residence run charge, 1.16 GB/FB
Canady vs. righties: .141 batting common allowed, 34.7% strikeouts, 7.2% BB charge, 4.24 pitches per batter confronted, 1.7% residence run charge, 0.39 GB/FB
In opposition to lefties, she retains the ball on the bottom and offers up the next batting common, however it’s nearly all singles. Righties, nonetheless, get fewer hits however are way more more likely to work deep into the rely and probably make good contact.
Nobody in Texas’ righty-heavy lineup actually did so again in February — nearly nobody even reached the outfield, and each of the Longhorns’ extra-base hits have been doubles down the third-base line — but when Texas does have success towards Canady within the coming days, it is more likely to come from star righties like Reese Atwood (1.354 OPS, 21 HRs, 86 RBIs), Joley Mitchell (1.276 OPS, 17 HRs, 63 RBIs) or Katie Stewart (1.166 OPS, 17 HRs, 78 RBIs) pulling a ball deep to left. They went a mixed 1-for-11 towards Canady in February, however they have been dynamite for many of 2025. Lefty Mia Scott (1.182 OPS, 8 HRs, 55 RBIs), in the meantime, did go 2-for-3 towards her as properly.
Prediction
Whoever wins within the coming days, it can really feel just like the fruits of a journey — both that of White’s Longhorns or of Canady herself. Kavan and Canady have mixed for only a 0.74 ERA so far within the WCWS, and it is due to this fact nearly inconceivable to not envision a scrappy, low-scoring sequence determined by random, nice particular person at-bats.
Since Texas has the deeper offense, and since Kavan has been Canady’s equal in OKC, the Longhorns are the plain favorites right here; in actual fact, ESPN BET offers Texas (-225) equal odds of 64.7% over Tech (+165).
With the unbelievable drama this WCWS has produced, we deserve a Sport 3, so I will say Texas in 3. The Horns have the general edge, however Canady and her more and more assured teammates will give themselves an opportunity at one other couple of upset wins.
