Texas Tech vs. Texas preview: Breaking down Canady's pitch, Kavan's surge and our prediction

As it turns out, there were multiple ways to end the Oklahoma softball dynasty.

Coach Mike White and Texas methodically laid a foundation, brick by brick, first getting to super regionals, then reaching the Women's College World Series championship series twice before falling to the Sooners both times. With a rugged, experienced team that snapped out of a late-season funk at the last possible moment, the Longhorns took down Oklahoma for the first time ever in the WCWS on Saturday, snagging a 4-2 win on their way to a third championship series in four years.

Texas Tech, meanwhile, just went out and signed the best player in the country last summer. That worked, too. NiJaree Canady led the Red Raiders to their first WCWS this season, allowing just one run in two wins, then outlasted Oklahoma's Sam Landry in a thrilling 3-2 victory on Monday night.

A breathless and thrilling WCWS, one that has featured walk-off home runs, pitching duels, late-night extra-inning affairs and, now, a fallen champion, will get the fitting ending it deserves.

Texas and Texas Tech will meet for the national title in a best-of-three series starting Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN. It will be the first title for whoever prevails.

Let's preview the championship series!

Jump to:
The basics | Last meeting
How did Kavan bounce back?
How to hit Canady's pitch
Prediction

The basics

Texas Longhorns

Coach: Mike White (seventh year)

Record: 54-11 (9-6 vs. other WCWS teams)

The Longhorns finished third in their first SEC campaign, but after a spectacular 39-3 start, they entered the postseason having gone just 7-7 in their last 14 games. After spending a good chunk of the season ranked No. 1 in the country, they drew just the No. 6 seed in the NCAA tournament.

Postseason path (8-1):

Regionals: def. Eastern Illinois (10-2), def. Michigan (16-4), def. UCF (9-0)
Super regionals: lost 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 in the bottom of the eighth. In MLB, that scenario produces a run over 80% of the time, and that's what ace Teagan Kavan was facing against a smoking-hot Clemson team in a must-win Game 2 in the Austin Super Regional. It had quickly begun to look like a "peaked too early" sort of season for both Texas and Kavan. But she generated a strikeout, a lineout and a groundout to escape the jam.

The Longhorns small-balled a couple of runs in the top of the 10th inning, and Kavan closed out a 5⅔-inning, no-run relief performance after getting out of one more potential jam at the bottom of the 10th.

Texas survived Game 3 against Clemson and, given life once more, shifted back into gear in Oklahoma City. Kavan has been the best pitcher in the WCWS (17 innings, 0.41 ERA, no extra-base hits allowed), and the Longhorns ruthlessly went 3-0 against a loaded top half of the bracket.

Texas Tech

Coach: Gerry Glasco (first year)

Record: 53-12 (3-2 vs. other WCWS teams)

After signing a record-setting NIL deal to play in Lubbock, Canady has been as good as advertised all season, leading the nation in wins (33), ERA (0.90) and both batting average allowed (0.153) and slugging percentage allowed (0.221). Through late March, Tech was still just 24-9 overall, having scored either zero or one run in five of its nine losses. Since the Red Raiders' late March series loss to South Carolina, however, they are 29-3, and they have yet to lose in the NCAA tournament.

Postseason path (8-0):

Regionals: def. Brown (6-0), def. Mississippi State (10-1), def. Mississippi State (9-6)
Super 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 while it's still merely good and not great, it has backed Canady with multiple runs in seven of eight postseason games. And she doesn't tend to need more than that. In four games against seeded opponents, Tech has scored 11 runs and allowed just four. Canady led Stanford to the national semifinals in each of the past two seasons, but in four WCWS losses for Canady, the Cardinal were shut out three times (including twice by Texas' Kavan last year). She has gotten more support than that this time around, and it has made a world of difference.

Perhaps most encouragingly, after Canady allowed a game-tying, two-run home run in the top of the seventh against Oklahoma on Monday evening -- the Sooners' bats didn't produce enough runs in OKC this year, but they still filled their "dramatic seventh-inning homers" quota -- Tech immediately responded, grinding out a run in the bottom of the seventh to win anyway.

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Texas Tech shocks the softball world, upsets Oklahoma

Scott Van Pelt reacts to Texas Tech's incredible upset over Oklahoma to reach their first ever Women's College World Series Championship Series.

The Red Raiders came to the WCWS as underdogs, but at this point, they have the confidence of title favorites.

Looking back at this year's meetings

Texas went 2-0 against Tech in the Bevo Classic in February. At least one of those wins might turn out to be pretty relevant.

Feb. 14 (Austin): Texas 2, Texas Tech 1 (nine innings)

Starters: Kavan (9 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 18 K, 1 BB) vs. Canady (8 IP, 7 H, 1 ER, 11 K, 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 got an early-season title-series preview, and Kavan put up a record-setting performance. Tech went ahead 1-0 in the fourth on an RBI single from Anya German, but a Scott double drove in Ashton Maloney in the fifth to send the game to extra innings. Canady was of course excellent, but Kavan struck out a career-best 18 batters, and the top three hitters in the Tech order -- Davis, Alana Johnson and Lauren Allred -- struck out nine times between them. In the bottom of the ninth, Joley Mitchell scored on a throwing error, and the Horns prevailed.

Feb. 16 (Austin): Texas 11, Texas Tech 0 (five innings)

Starters: Kavan (4 IP, 6 H, 0 ER, 5 K, 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 2 runs; Texas' Reese Atwood: 1-for-1 with a HR, an RBI, 2 BB and 3 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 in this matchup, it is not quite as relevant -- Texas batters are probably not going to see someone other than Canady in the coming days unless something goes haywire. That said, Tech batters did get a few more cracks at Kavan and did very little with them.

Overall, Kavan pitched 13 innings against the Red Raiders this season and allowed just one earned run and 10 hits with nearly two strikeouts per inning. That was a nice rebound for her after a couple of iffy performances against Tech last season, but besides Demi Elder (2-for-5 with four RBIs against Kavan), none of the players who were decent against her in 2024 are still in the Red Raiders' lineup.

How did Teagan Kavan turn it back on?

For a little while, it appeared as if the proverbial SEC grind was catching up to both Texas and Kavan. After a 39-3 start, the Longhorns went 7-7 from April 12 through the SEC tournament, and Kavan pretty clearly lost her edge.

(* GB/FB = ground ball-to-fly ball ratio)

Kavan gave up three runs in four innings in a 4-1 loss to Tennessee, then allowed a combined eight runs (five earned) in higher-scoring wins over LSU (7-3 and 6-5) the next weekend. Oklahoma absolutely 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 in the following weeks, Ole Miss scored six, Michigan scored four and Clemson scored five against her. She was nibbling too much, missing the strike zone more, getting herself into more hitter's counts and allowing far too many baserunners.

At the WCWS, that has all changed. Back at Devon Park, where she had two brilliant outings against Canady and Stanford in 2024, she reverted to form. She's getting ahead of hitters again, she's keeping the ball in the strike zone but varying her locations better, and she's simply not letting batters get any good wood on the ball whatsoever.

Here are the hit locations for Florida and Oklahoma -- the teams that finished the season ranked second and fourth in home runs -- in Kavan's first two WCWS games this season. (She came in in relief against Tennessee on Monday after No. 2 pitcher Mac Morgan pitched four scoreless innings.)

Of 56 Sooners and Gator batters faced, only about six made genuinely threatening contact, and all six flew out to center or right field. Oklahoma and Florida have incredibly powerful lineups, and the Sooners had throttled Kavan pretty well, both in April and in last season's WCWS. She forced both the Gators and Sooners to settle for singles.

Now Kavan faces a Tech lineup she shut down twice in February. Tech has been able to generate runs -- though rarely a ton of them (and almost none against Kavan) -- in a variety of ways. This isn't an incredibly deep batting order, but the Red Raiders have a little bit of speed, power and patience.

Mihyia Davis, 4-for-7 against Kavan back in February, leads the team in total bases (123), stolen bases (26) and runs scored (64), and she's second in extra-base hits (21, including 10 doubles and six triples). She's a solid chaos agent at the top of the order. Behind her, No. 3 hitter Lauren Allred is a solid doubles hitter (she's second on the team with a 1.071 OPS), and Canady herself, the cleanup hitter, leads the team with a 1.121 OPS and 11 home runs in just 101 at-bats. She has three postseason homers, though she's just 1-for-8 with a double and a walk in the WCWS. The bottom half of the order, meanwhile, with players like Alana Johnson and catcher Victoria Valdez, basically just tries to soak up pitches before turning things back over to Davis at the top.

Success against Kavan was hard to come by in February, and with Kavan raising her game in Oklahoma City, that might remain the case. But if there's consolation here for the Red Raiders, it's that their ace might keep Tech in games long enough for the batters to figure something out.

How do you hit a NiJaree Canady pitch?

It's just jaw-dropping how much Canady continues to live up to the hype. She now has made 11 WCWS appearances in three seasons, and in 65⅔ innings pitched she has allowed just 37 hits with a 1.18 ERA and 77 strikeouts. When her team gives her any run support whatsoever, she wins, and it's patently unfair that she has hit as many home runs this season (11) as she has allowed.

In terms of both keeping opponents off the bases and giving up little power, she has been the best pitcher in the sport this season.

The history of sports is littered with stories of players signing prolific contracts but failing to deliver on them. Canady, however, signed a jaw-dropping NIL deal -- one that honestly shifted paradigms for women's sports as a whole -- and then simply went out and earned her money, start after start.

It's hard to figure out the best way to quantify Canady's dominance because it's so thorough. So, let's actually look at the stats in a different way: When someone has success against Canady, what does it look like? Heading into her Monday night outing against Oklahoma, here's where batters have gotten their hits against Canady:

The right-handed Canady allows nearly the same overall batting stats against right- and left-handed batters (she has allowed a .450 OPS against lefties and a .437 OPS against righties), but she gives up vastly different contact against them:

Canady vs. lefties: .173 batting average allowed, 36.4% strikeout rate, 2.5% BB rate, 4.07 pitches per batter faced, 0.8% home run rate, 1.16 GB/FB

Canady vs. righties: .141 batting average allowed, 34.7% strikeouts, 7.2% BB rate, 4.24 pitches per batter faced, 1.7% home run rate, 0.39 GB/FB

Against lefties, she keeps the ball on the ground and gives up a higher batting average, but it's almost all singles. Righties, however, get fewer hits but are far more likely to work deep into the count and potentially make good contact.

No one in Texas' righty-heavy lineup really did so back in February -- almost no one even reached the outfield, and both of the Longhorns' extra-base hits were doubles down the third-base line -- but if Texas does have success against Canady in the coming days, it's 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 combined 1-for-11 against Canady in February, but they've been dynamite for most of 2025. Lefty Mia Scott (1.182 OPS, 8 HRs, 55 RBIs), meanwhile, did go 2-for-3 against her as well.

Prediction

Whoever wins in the coming days, it will feel like the culmination of a journey -- either that of White's Longhorns or of Canady herself. Kavan and Canady have combined for just a 0.74 ERA thus far in the WCWS, and it's therefore almost impossible not to envision a scrappy, low-scoring series decided by random, great individual at-bats.

Since Texas has the deeper offense, and since Kavan has been Canady's equal in OKC, the Longhorns are the obvious favorites here; in fact, ESPN BET gives Texas (-225) equivalent odds of 64.7% over Tech (+165).

With the incredible drama this WCWS has produced, we deserve a Game 3, so I'll say Texas in 3. The Horns have the overall edge, but Canady and her increasingly confident teammates will give themselves a chance at another couple of upset wins.