All of a sudden, Texas Tech Red Raiders head coach Gerry Glasco has difficult pitching decisions to make. And with the Texas Longhorns on the verge of winning back-to-back national titles against Glasco’s upstart program, the inability to get those decisions right on Tuesday in Game 1 of the Women’s College World Series could define the finals.
Last year, it was simple for Glasco — it was star pitcher NiJaree Canady or bust after Texas Tech invested $1 million in the Stanford transfer and nothing
in the rest of the pitching staff.
Now Glasco has some quality depth behind Canady, including UCLA transfer Kaitlyn Terry, who has platooned with Canady throughout the tournament.
In the finals opener, after a “back-and-forth” discussion with his coaching staff, Glasco opted to start Terry over Canady.
“I’m comfortable putting NiJa in a game,” Glasco said. “I’m not comfortable taking her out of the game. KT has been so good for us. I wanted to see how she competed in this series. I think I needed to know that in order to go into [Games] 2 and 3.”
The move backfired quickly — despite the Red Raiders taking a 1-0 lead in the top of the first inning, Terry gave up a two-run home run to red-hot Longhorns slugger Katie Stewart and departed with runners on first and third with two outs, ending the shortest start of Terry’s stellar three-year career that now spans 78 starts in the circle.
Canady didn’t get any help from the defense behind her when first baseman Katie Lis couldn’t come up with a chopper into the hole and left fielder Desirae Spearman misjudged a hard-hit ball by slap hitter Ashton Maloney that went over her head for a triple to give the Horns a 5-1 lead.
“I think we were able to attack early, and so we were able to chase Terry out of the game quickly,” Stewart said. “So obviously NiJa came in. NiJa had her stuff. Yeah, I was surprised she came out early, but she’ll be fresh for tomorrow.”
After the second inning, Glasco removed Canady after just 22 pitches after the Texas Tech bats failed to respond against Texas ace Teagan Kavan.
“We’ve got two games, and I felt like I was going to give our offense the second and third inning to respond, and if we didn’t get anything, I didn’t feel like I could leave NiJa out there and let them look at her,” Glasco said. “I want the matchup tomorrow, and I just felt like it wasn’t a smart move for me to leave her out there in that moment.”
The question facing Glasco, who is only making his second career appearance in the Women’s College World Series, is whether it was a smart move to start Terry over Canady and continue overthinking with his constant pitching changes that resulted in Tech giving up seven runs to Texas, Florida (five innings), and UCLA (nine innings), and four in the opener against Alabama.
Entering the finals, Glasco had made 16 pitching changes between deciding game of the Gainesville Super Regional and the first three games of the WCWS before making one in the two wins over Alabama and then reverting to his previous postseason decision-making on Tuesday.
That stands in sharp contrast to how Glasco operated last year as Canady single-handedly carried the Red Raiders to the brink of a national championship by throwing 686 consecutive pitches for Tech over 48 innings beginning in the super regional. By the decisive third game of the finals, she faltered after throwing the third-most innings nationally, allowing five first-inning runs for the Horns and departing after facing just eight batters, the most runs she had allowed in an inning in her career.
“I think that we pushed it to the very limit,” Glasco said at the time. “I think the kid gave us everything that she had. … All you had to do was look at the velocity the first night compared to the second night and tonight. And it was slowly edging away.”
With Canady fresh for Wednesday’s game at 7 p.m. Central on ESPN, she’ll get the start for the Red Raiders, but if she struggles like she has in the past against the Longhorns, Glasco could face another defining decision — let her pitch through it or immediately turn to Terry.
For Texas head coach Mike White, he’ll make a decision on Wednesday whether to turn back to Kavan after 113 pitches or lean on right-hander Citlaly Gutierrez
“‘I’m not sure what I’m going to do yet, so I’ve got to keep it under my hat, too,” White said. “She looked like she threw 115 pitches, which is quite a bit. We have the luxury of deciding whether to go with another pitcher or not. Citlaly did pitch very well the last couple of times out. So there’s an option there. It’s something we’ll kind of sleep over.”
