Tennessee gets Texas again on June 1 in the Women’s College World Series semifinals, and this time the Lady Vols arrive without a loss. The No. 7 seed has already beaten the Longhorns once in Oklahoma City and now needs only one more win to reach the championship series.
That rematch is set for noon ET on, with Tennessee carrying the edge that comes from staying in the winners’ bracket. Texas, by contrast, had to survive an elimination game on May 31 and now must beat Tennessee twice to advance, a steep ask for a team that is also in its fourth game in five days and playing on back-to-back days.
The first meeting between the teams came on May 28, when Tennessee beat No. 2 Texas 6-3. Elsa Morrison gave the Lady Vols the start they wanted with a three-run homer in the second inning for a 3-0 lead, and Tennessee kept building from there. Taelyn Holley scored after a leadoff single in the fifth inning and a pair of wild pitches, Gabby Leach drove in another run with a single in the sixth, and Holley scored again in the seventh inning in the middle of a double play.
That win showed Tennessee could score enough against a Texas staff that is built to keep games tight. The Lady Vols finished with seven hits, five RBIs, two doubles, two walks, one home run and five strikeouts, and their six runs were the second-highest total in the NCAA Tournament. Junior pitcher Sage Mardjetko held Texas to one hit in four innings with one strikeout and two walks, while Karlyn Pickens finished the job with two strikeouts, four hits allowed and two earned runs for her seventh save of the season.
Tennessee followed that with a 2-1 walk-off win over No. 11 seed Texas Tech on May 30 to stay unbeaten. Texas, meanwhile, beat Nebraska 3-1 on May 31 to keep its season alive and earn another crack at the Lady Vols. The setup leaves Tennessee in the position it has wanted all week: one win from its third WCWS championship series appearance and a chance to keep chasing a first national title.
The bracket path matters because Tennessee has reached this stage without dropping out of the winners’ side for the first time since 2013, the last year it made the championship series. This is also Tennessee’s third WCWS semifinal in the past four years, a stretch that has turned the program’s postseason runs into a familiar June presence. Texas enters as the reigning national champion, but Tennessee has already shown it can handle the matchup once; on June 1, it has to do it again.
Mike White called the pitching matchups a cat-and-mouse game, and the schedule has only tightened the margins. Tennessee sophomore pitcher Erin Nuwer has not yet been seen by Texas, which adds one more layer if the teams are pushed deep into the day. For Tennessee, the path is simple and unforgiving: win once and move on, or let Texas force the kind of second game that Oklahoma City often turns into a test of endurance.
