Tennessee
What to know about Tennessee, Karlyn Pickens vs Oklahoma in Women’s College World Series
Tennessee softball is heading back to Oklahoma City after beating Nebraska in the NCAA super regional.
The No. 7 seed Lady Vols (45-15) are making their ninth appearance in the Women’s College World Series, and their second in the last three years. Tennessee and star pitcher Karlyn Pickens will face No. 2 seed Oklahoma (50-7) to open the WCWS on May 29 (2:30 p.m. ET, ESPN).
Tennessee’s last trip to Oklahoma City was in 2023 when it made a run to the semifinals before being eliminated.
Buy tickets for Tennessee softball vs. Oklahoma in WCWS
Here’s what you need to know about the matchup with the Sooners.
Tennessee, Karlyn Pickens beat Oklahoma in road series
Tennessee started the road series at Oklahoma with a 5-2 win in extra innings thanks to catcher Sophia Nugent, who started her career as a Sooner. Nugent hit a two-run homer in the eighth inning, giving the Lady Vols a 4-2 lead before Laura Mealer scored on a wild pitch.
Tennessee then lost 4-1 in Game 2, only logging four hits – and Taylor Pannell had three of them and scored the lone run with a solo home run. But the Lady Vols won the rubber match 5-3, scoring all five runs in the fourth inning. Mealer hit a two-RBI double before Ella Dodge blasted a three-run homer to win the game.
Karlyn Pickens had 12 strikeouts, 10 hits allowed, three walks, one hit by pitch and four earned runs in 12⅔ innings over the series. Sage Mardjetko had four strikeouts, six hits allowed, eight walks and five earned runs in 5⅓ innings. Erin Nuwer pitched three innings with two strikeouts, one hit allowed, one walk and one hit by pitch.
Oklahoma softball offense has firepower
The Sooners once again have one of the strongest offenses in the country. They rank No. 2 in home runs per game (2.02) with 115 on the season. Oklahoma is No. 5 in scoring with an average of 7.75 runs per game and 442 total.
Ella Parker leads OU’s offense with a .416 batting average, and Kasidi Pickering is right behind her at .413. Four more batters are hitting above .300, and Gabbie Garcia leads the team with 20 home runs. Pickering has hit 18 homers, and six Sooners total have hit at least 11 this season.
They also don’t strike out often. The Sooners have only struck out 207 times, which is only 3.63 times per game.
Karlyn Pickens vs Sam Landry pitchers’ duel is brewing
Senior right-hander Sam Landry (23-4) became the Sooners’ ace after transferring from Louisiana. She leads the OU staff with a 1.92 ERA with 170 strikeouts in 167⅔ innings pitched.
Tennessee had eight hits against Landry in Game 1, but then it was held to four hits in the next two games.
Pickens (24-9), the back-to-back SEC Pitcher of the Year, leads Tennessee’s staff with a 1.00 ERA. She has thrown 280 strikeouts in 204 innings, and opponents have hit .168 against her. In two straight elimination games against Nebraska, Pickens threw 21 strikeouts in 14 innings with only seven hits allowed, two walks and two earned runs.
Karlyn Pickens throws fastest softball pitch ever recorded – again
Pickens already broke Monica Abbott’s record for fastest softball pitch ever recorded in March when she threw 78.2 mph against Arkansas. But she topped her own record in Game 3 against Nebraska.
In the first at-bat of the game, Pickens threw 79.4 mph. It was Nebraska pitcher Jordy Bahl’s first at-bat of the game, and she fouled off the record-breaking pitch.
Pickens had already hit 77 mph twice this season before breaking the record Abbott originally set the record during a National Pro Fastpitch game in 2012.
Tennessee softball vs Oklahoma: Series history
Tennessee is 7-8 all time against Oklahoma, which owns a 4-3 record vs the Lady Vols at neutral sites. After taking the road series in March, Tennessee is 4-3 against OU in Norman.
Before meeting for the first time in SEC play this season, the last time Tennessee faced the Sooners was in the opening game of the 2023 WCWS. Oklahoma beat the Lady Vols 9-0 in five innings.
Watch Tennessee softball vs. Oklahoma on Fubo (free trial)
What time does Tennessee softball vs Oklahoma start?
- Date: Thursday, May 29
- Time: 2:30 p.m. ET
- Where: Devon Park in Oklahoma City
What TV channel is Tennessee softball vs Oklahoma on?
Cora Hall covers University of Tennessee women’s athletics. Email her at cora.hall@knoxnews.com and follow her on X @corahalll. If you enjoy Cora’s coverage, consider a digital subscription that allows you to access all of it.
Tennessee baseball received a commitment from UC Irvine pitcher Ricky Ojeda on June 19.
Ojeda, who is eligible for the MLB draft in July, announced his decision on social media. He visited Tennessee on June 15-16.
The lefthanded Ojeda had a strong 2026 season primarily as a reliever, posting a 3.77 ERA with 62 strikeouts and 20 walks in 62 innings. In 2025, he became the first reliever to be named Big West Pitcher of the Year after going 13-1 with a 3.55 ERA and 83 strikeouts in 66 innings, which also earned him a third-team all-American nod from the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association and Perfect Game.
Whether Ojeda makes it to Tennessee remains an open question. Perfect Game ranked him as the No. 179 prospect for the draft. That would place him in the sixth round.
Should Ojeda join the staff, however, he would instantly become one of the team’s top options out of a bullpen that struggled immensely in 2026. The pitching staff is also under new leadership under pitching coach Austin Knight, who was hired from ECU.
Ojeda is the fourth player to announce they will transfer to Tennessee this offseason, joining two-way Mercer transfer Braydon Kersey, Northwestern State pitcher Brody Trosclair and Air Force infielder Wyatt Hanoian.
Who’s leaving Tennessee baseball
- UTL Jay Abernathy (Oklahoma)
- RHP Nic Abraham
- INF Ariel Antigua (Arizona)
- INF Finley Bates
- RHP Ari Bethea
- OF Hutson Chance
- RHP Sawyer Deering (San Diego State)
- OF Nate Eisfelder
- 1B Evan Hankins (Virginia Tech)
- UTL Hunter High
- RHP Brayden Krenzel (Arkansas)
- INF Manny Marin
- INF Ethan Moore (Missouri)
- UTL Chris Newstrom
- LHP Taylor Tracey
- C Cash Williams (West Virginia)
Who’s joining Tennessee baseball
- RHP/DH Braydon Kersey
- LHP Brody Trosclair
- INF Wyatt Hanoian
- LHP Ricky Ojeda
Emmett Siegel covers Tennessee baseball for Knox News. Email: emmett.siegel@knoxnews.com; X: @EmmettSiegel_
JACKSON, Tenn. (WBBJ) – An exciting day of sporting clays in West Tennessee is doubling as a major fight against hunger.
Today’s “Shooting Hunger” event took place at the Carroll County Shooting Sports Park in Huntingdon. It’s a partnership between Tennessee Farm Bureau, Tennessee Farmers Co-Op, Farm Credit Mid-America and Rural First.
Since 2015, Shooting Hunger has helped provide more than three million meals to Tennesseans with money going to food banks, backpack programs, and local hunger relief. A $500 scholarship will also go to the top youth shooter in each flight.
“We’re joining together to raise money for school backpacks to feed hungry kids. We do these, we actually do three of these across the state of Tennessee so at the end of the day we take, we take all the money we put it into a pile and when we divide equally amongst all 95 counties across the state of Tennessee,“ said Bryan Wright, executive vice president for the Tennessee Farm Bureau.
Organizers say events like this matter because one in six children in Tennessee struggle with hunger.
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Tennessee director of track and field Duane Ross gauged the hunger of the men’s 4×100-meter relay team to pull off the upset.
“They said, ‘Coach, we’re going to win,’ ” Ross said. “When they bring you that much confidence, you can grab your popcorn and enjoy the meet.”
No popcorn was consumed, but the appetite was there from the start.
Traunard Folson, Davonte Howell, T’Mars McCallum and Elijah Clark finished in a school record time of 37.98 seconds at the NCAA Outdoor Championships on June 12 in Eugene, Oregon. It was the the program’s first national title in the 4×100 since 1983 and the fourth-fastest in NCAA history.
Four other relay teams never crossed the line. Auburn, the two-time defending champion, had run an NCAA-record 37.75 in the semifinal, but had a botched handoff on the last exchange. Arkansas, the reigning SEC champion, also dropped its baton, along with Oregon and Houston.
McCallum said staying clean through a race of chaos starts with a focus on winning, even in practice.
“In the moment we can’t really worry about anything else, just what we can control,” McCallum said on June 18. “We came to practice every time with the idea of, ‘OK, we’ve got to make sure this is fixed, because we know if we run that time, we can win.’ “
It was the final event of McCallum’s college career. It didn’t fully hit until the long flight home to Knoxville.
“I was like, we really did it,” he said. “Now we have a school record, the first team to ever go under 38 seconds here.”
Whether belief had anything to do with what went wrong in those four other lanes isn’t something Tennessee’s runners can answer. It’s exactly what they point to for why theirs didn’t.
Clark, a freshman who ran the anchor leg, said winning was just a matter of starting the race.
“We knew we had it the whole time,” he said. “No matter who did what, what happened, we knew what the outcome would come to.”
Ross said the victory wasn’t a surprise inside the program either.
“I wouldn’t say unsung,” Ross said. “I’ve watched this team all year long, and we were expecting to come out of there with the championship. It was a tight competition down to the last event.”
Tennessee finished third in the men’s team standings with 46 points, its best total since 2002.
Howell, a junior who ran the second leg, said the belief behind the relay team’s confidence was built long before the race.
“Three of the four of us already ran under 10 seconds,” he said. “Last year we all trained together during the summer, all lived together. We already had the bond, and adding the freshman on anchor was just a cherry on top. He figured it out at SECs, ran a 10.1, season’s best, and we trusted him to bring it home.”
Clark said the title is already part of something bigger to him.
“The goal is to always make history,” said Clark, who was hired by Tennessee four years ago after a successful run at North Carolina A&T. “It’s been one of my dreams. To be able to be on the wall, especially at a school like this, I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
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