Sluggish batting landed Texas softball its first conference series loss of the season, losing the third game 4–1 to No. 7/5 Tennessee.
The Texas offense was a victim to the Lady Vols junior pitcher Karlyn Pickens’ outstanding rise balls. Being one of the best pitchers in the country with an earned run average of .94, she held the Longhorns to six hits, one run, while striking out 10 batters. The Longhorns failed to adjust Pickens’ speed and change ups. For Texas, it was virtually impossible to get any batting momentum.
“You’re only going to get two or three runs max against a pitcher like that,” head coach Mike White said. “But it wasn’t from a lack of effort, though; they tried hard, but we just weren’t quite good enough today.”
Even after junior catcher Reese Atwood gave the fans in burnt orange some hope by sending one to the wall, allowing redshirt junior outfielder Ashton Maloney to score a run and tie the game at the top of the first, the Longhorns faced an excruciating scoreless six innings. They failed to capitalize off of any scoring opportunities. Across all seven innings, Texas left seven batters on base.
As expected, White started sophomore pitcher Teagan Kavan, who lost the pitching battle after an inconsistent performance. The top of the first inning looked bleak for Kavan and her defense. She walked the leadoff batter and hit the following, while the third batter landed on first base off a bunt. With bases loaded, Kavan pitched a pop up that was caught by Atwood, but she collided with graduate infielder Joley Mitchell, allowing senior outfielder Kinsey Fiedler to score from third. Kavan limited the damage by striking out the next two batters.
Although Kavan settled down in the top of the second, sending three Tennessee batters up and out, back-to-back doubles put the Vols back on top 2–1 in the top of the third. After giving up a leadoff walk off and a single at the top of the fifth, those two runners were put in scoring position off of a wild pitch by Kavan. Texas’ coaching staff had no choice to replace her with junior Citlaly Gutierrez.
“Well, the first inning was a nightmare; it was a really tough one,” White said. “We just couldn’t do anything right. The walks on the day hurt us; three walks equaled three runs and that’s the difference in the ball game. And we were facing really tough pitching today, so you just can’t do that.”
From there, it was all Tennessee. The Lady Vols were able to tack on two more insurance runs in the fifth and seventh via a pop fly and a single by senior infielder McKenna Gibson. Any flashes of a Texas comeback, which included a couple of hits by Maloney and sophomore infielder Katie Stewart, were shut down quickly by Pickens.
This series loss is Texas’ first three-game conference series drop at home since losing to Oklahoma in Austin in 2022. Texas will look to reload against No. 5/6 LSU at home next weekend.
