How will Teagan Kavan lead Texas on the mound in the WCWS Championship?
Yahoo Sports senior MLB analyst Jordan Shusterman is joined by Yahoo Sports writer Cassandra Negley to discuss what they expect from Texas ace Teagan Kavan against Texas Tech in the WCWS Championship. Hear the full conversation on the “Baseball Bar-B-Cast” podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Spotify or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
So Texas Tech, I mean, it's an all-star team.
It's, they have more talent, and their numbers are more eye-popping, and Canady is, you know, singular, and Terry's awesome.
So, however, they did not win last year.
That was Texas.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And a big part of that is because of their ace, Tegan Cavan.
Now, the, the, Texas does have another very good pitcher in Sl- Citlali Gutierrez, who did pitch, yesterday as well.
However, you could tell, like And honestly, Tennessee's probably kicking themselves because that was the opportunity, was to- Yeah was to beat not Cavan, and they were unable to do that.
Tegan Cavan is a junior.
She was the most outstanding of player in last year's College World Series.
She had the shutout, or at least a, the complete game in, in the, the clincher last year, and she's just rock solid.
I mean, this is just as, like, she is ready to go, and so I would expect her to essentially pitch the entirety of this series.
We, we will see.
I don't know if, if Mike White, their head coach, gave any sort of hint towards that.
But let's just talk about Cavan a little bit and what you've seen from her.
Yeah, Cavan has been lights out.
Mike didn't really go either way about what he's doing, and I think handling your pitchers in terms of softball is very different than baseball, and it's very intriguing.
You mentioned that Tennessee-Texas matchup, and, and Tennessee's head coach, Karen Weekly, had talked about you have to plan as if there's a second game.
But also, it feels like, don't you wanna, like, really try and win the first if you're in that position to win the first and advance?
Yep.
Obviously, a little different when you're playing, like, a game every night.
but Mike did talk about Citlali, and that she's really come along.
They have confidence in her.
You heard from a lot of coaches this week that the stage is different, and so to get a pitcher out there and give her some time to settle in, maybe that does help them out in the series.
But I would expect it to be the same as last year, where Cavan is really gonna step in for them, try and shut it down, and be the winning pitcher.
I think what we've seen throughout the series is that, and this is so dumb and obvious- but you need a little bit of both.
Like, you need some offense, and you need some good pitching, and the teams that were too far on one side are out of the tournament.
