Longhorns hope a simple approach leads to breakthrough in WCWS finals against Texas Tech
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Third time’s a charm? The Texas Longhorns hope so.
For the third time in four seasons, Texas is in the Women’s College World Series championship series. While they aren’t playing an elite offensive team like the Oklahoma Sooners, like the two times before, they’ll face one of the most dominant pitchers in college softball for the past two seasons in Texas Tech’s NiJaree Canady.
What’s the key to finding success against a pitcher with a 0.90 ERA and 304 strikeouts? Turn hitting into a drill that players learn when they’re in Little League.
“The biggest thing he (hitting coach Steve Singleton) asks us is to be disciplined and on time, and he always says to play pepper,” first baseman Joley Mitchell said. “She’s going to produce some of the speed for us, so if we’re out there and just playing a little game, we’ll be just fine.”
Pepper is the classic drill that emphasizes bat-to-ball skills, barrel control and hand-eye coordination. There’s not a big swing that values launch angle or exit velocity involved, it’s simplifying a hitter’s approach that helps calm their mind. Let’s face it, hitting a yellow 12-inch ball moving faster than 70 mph from 43 feet away isn’t an easy thing to do, but having the right mentality certainly helps.
The Longhorns have a good history against Canady, going 3-0 against her once this season with the Red Raiders and twice last season when she played at Stanford. Those two wins while she was with the Cardinal were in last year’s WCWS, a 4-0 win to open the tournament and a 1-0 victory in the semifinals. Texas won this year’s matchup against her 2-1 in nine innings Feb. 14 in Austin.
How is Canady going to deal with a team that’s had success against her?
“We’re going to change things up, keep them off-balanced,” Canady said. “They’re a really good offensive team, but Coach Gerry (Glasco) is really good at knowing what to throw batters, and how we can attack their weaknesses while playing to my strengths.”
Canady has been dealing with a hamstring injury for most of the season, which, at one point, was thought to be serious enough that she’d have to take time off. Glasco said if the injury were to her right leg instead of her left leg, she wouldn’t be able to pitch. Since it’s in the left leg, it has just hampered her hitting to a degree.
“It was close,” Glasco said. “We were walking on pins and needles for about a month. We eliminated all of her bullpens in the middle of the week, and she didn’t take a lot of batting practice.”
She was a pitcher-only at Stanford, and one of the reasons Canady wanted to transfer to Texas Tech (other than the $1 million NIL deal with The Matador Club, Tech’s NIL collective) was that she’d hit. She’s hitting .297 with 11 home runs, so there’s still some pop left in her bat.
Glasco is in his first year as the Red Raiders’ head coach following seven years at Louisiana, where he helped build the Ragin’ Cajuns into a top-25 program. He went 300-88 as the head coach in Lafayette.
He has a special connection with Texas head coach Mike White. Glasco’s late daughter, Geri Ann, played for White while he coached at Oregon from 2015-2016 and was a student assistant coach in 2017. Geri Ann tragically died in a car crash in 2019, but Gerry said that relationship helped build a friendship between him and White.
“If Geri Ann were here, I don’t know if she’d root for me or White,” he said. “She loved White. She used to compare us a lot, she’d say, ‘Daddy, he’s just like you, he just has a little more colorful vocabulary … I’m looking forward to competing with him. We’ll get after it.”
The first game of the best-of-three series is at 7 p.m. Wednesday on ESPN.
