Texas Tech isn’t the same team Oklahoma has dealt with in recent years. But given OU’s SEC series loss to Alabama over the weekend, the Sooners didn’t mind so much.

No. 9 Oklahoma knocked off their former Big 12 rivals in a one-off midweek game Tuesday, 8-6. The Sooners used a four-run third inning to break things open but ultimately had to hang on as Texas Tech brought the potential game-tying run to the plate in the ninth.

The Red Raiders trailed 8-3 entering the eighth inning, but a Logan Hughes solo home run in the frame and Antonelli Savaterre’s triple combined with Hughes’ RBI single in the ninth to make things interesting. Hughes’ single, however, came with two outs and Dylan Crooks retired the next batter to leave Hughes stranded to end the game.

Oklahoma ended up needing its four-run inning. All four OU hits in the third resulted in runs. Drew Dickerson and Dasan Harris each had RBI singles, turning a 1-1 game into a 3-1 lead. Harris’ knock came with two outs. As did Jason Walk’s RBI double and Easton Carmichael closed out the inning’s scoring with an RBI single to knock in Walk.

The big inning provided some breathing room for Sooners’ pitchers. Tech had just one hit through the first five innings. Even then, the Red Raiders finished with just five hits, as eight different Oklahoma pitchers kept the Tech bats relatively quiet, but struggled with walks and hit batters, giving up eight and two, respectively.

Walk, Carmichael, and Harris all had three hits for OU. Walk’s all went for extra bases as he finished 3 of 4 with two doubles, a home run, two walks, two RBI and two runs. Carmichael also homered for the Sooners, as did Jaxon Willits.

Tech is in danger of its first losing season since 2010 as the Red Raiders fell to 8-17 on the season. OU, which returns to Southeastern Conference play Thursday through Saturday against No. 6 LSU, lifted its record to 23-5.

Rori Harmon wants to be known for her defense. The senior point guard for the No. 1 Texas Longhorns prides herself on her ability to lock down some of the best point guards in the sport night in and night out. And in Texas’ Elite Eight win over TCU, she locked down Hailey Van Lith, one of the nation’s most electric scorers.

Two years after Van Lith ended Harmon and Texas’s season in the second round, Harmon got her revenge. In the Elite Eight, Harmon locked down Van Lith, limiting her to just 3-15 from the field and forcing her into seven turnovers. Before the Elite Eight matchup, Harmon shared her excitement to guard a player like Van Lith, and while she talked a big game, she backed it up with her play.

“I don’t really have to prove much, I’ve been doing this for a while, ever since I was a freshman, or even before college, I’ve been playing defense the way I do, I’m just more fundamentally sound at it now,” Harmon said. “I’m excited for that matchup, I’m excited for the competition, I’m always gonna take on whoever their best player is, I love that, I take that with responsibility. Like what my teammates and my coaches say, how I come out and attack and punch on defense, that’s basically how the team is going to play.”

Harmon set the tone early on defense for the Longhorns and Texas would go on to force 21 turnovers and allow just 12 made field goals.

While Harmon is not one of the four finalists for Naismith Defensive Player of the Year, she’s going to keep locking down the teams she comes across.

“I would say team defense always is the number one thing, trying to limit her touches as much as possible,” Harmon said after beating TCU. “She’s a three level scorer and a great basketball player, and she played very, really well for them, but yeah, just kind of standing firm, I think, with a good basketball player and ball hander like she is, like me personally, I can’t, like gamble and on dribbles and heads these like I have, to just stay disciplined stay in front, cut her off and stuff like that. Just get her to like go the ball because a lot of her off a lot of their offense runs through her, and she makes great play so just kind of getting the ball out of her hands is definitely is one of the keys.”

Harmon and the Longhorns will take the court next for their fourth game against South Carolina, this time in the Final Four.

In 2015, U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack declared that the conditions for children in the Texas foster care system were so bad that it represented a violation of the children’s constitutional rights. Texas children, she wrote, had been “shuttled throughout a system where rape, abuse, psychotropic medication, and instability are the norm,” and where children “often age out of care more damaged than when they entered.”

Ten years later, dramatic changes have shaken the child welfare system in Texas. Much work remains, but the outcomes are nothing short of shocking. Texas now removes fewer children, keeps more children out of foster care, and protects more children from abuse and neglect than ever before. Accomplishing all three of these goals at the same time is something few people thought was possible.

Many Texans may not realize how quickly a child can be removed from their home if Child Protective Services believes there is an immediate risk. Even today, after years of reforms, a court has the authority to take a parent’s child even when the parent, CPS, and the judge all agree that the parent is most likely innocent of abuse and neglect.

Nationally, 1 out of every 3 children will experience a CPS investigation by age 18, according to a study published by the American Journal on Public Health. For Black and Native American children, it’s more than 1 out of every 2.

Once a child is removed, he or she will stay in foster care for an average of 14 months. In Texas, only a third of them will ever return home. Reform advocates often point out that a stranger who is accused of abusing a child is entitled to a litany of due process protections in a criminal trial that a parent is never afforded in a civil trial — even when the parent is accused of the same conduct. Yet, it is the parents who face the prospect of losing their child completely.

Termination of parental rights is often referred to as the “death penalty” of civil law. It’s not hard to see why. Most parents would sooner go to jail than lose their children.

In 2018, Texas removed 20,685 children from their homes. That same year, 211 children died from abuse and neglect in Texas. But since that time, the system has been shocked by a barrage of reforms. In 2024, Texas removed 9,220 children — a 55% drop in just six years. Furthermore, 99 children died from abuse and neglect in 2024 — a 53% drop.

Also in 2018, a new set of CPS reforms began taking effect, reforms that would set the tone for nearly eight years of earthshaking changes to the child welfare system in Texas.

State Reps. Gene Wu, D-Houston, James Frank, R-Wichita Falls, and Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, who is now the speaker of the Texas House, worked together in 2017 to craft and pass HB 7 with the help of Sen. Bryan Hughes. The bill included a long list of due process reforms to Texas CPS law. Among other reforms, the bill prohibited child removals based on a family being low-income, required CPS to end its practice of suing parents in multiple courts at the same time (one court for each child), and prohibited CPS from terminating the rights of both parents when they only had evidence against one. The bill passed the Legislature with near unanimous support. Due process in CPS cases had gotten the Legislature’s attention.

In the years following, due process reforms in Texas sped up. In 2020, the Texas Supreme Court ended a practice whereby a jury could terminate parental rights even when jurors could not agree on what the parent had done wrong — a rule change specifically set in motion by HB 7.

In 2021, HB 567 dramatically reformed the definition of child neglect. In 2023, HB 730 required CPS caseworkers to inform parents of their rights before questioning them, like police officers do with criminal suspects. Both bills included numerous other reforms as well, and they were accompanied by a slew of other bills each making additional “pro-family” reforms to the system — reforms ranging from narrowly targeted due process changes to broad new standards of training for CPS caseworkers. Almost all of the bills passed with broad bipartisan support.

In 2021, Rep. Wu put clear words to the problem when describing how HB 567 changed the definition of neglect to prohibit the removal of a child unless there was an immediate danger. “We’ve always looked at what we’re doing for kids, but we don’t consider often what we’re doing to kids. … We guarantee you, if you strip them from their family, they will be traumatized. The question that we’ve never asked is this: Is it worth it?”

Because fewer children are being removed from their homes, the total number of children sitting in foster care has also plummeted, according to Texas Department of Family and Protective Services data. Altogether, the shift in the system since the 2018 reforms began has been dramatic:

• Children removed by CPS each year: down 55%
• Child deaths from abuse and neglect: down 53%
• Number of children sitting in foster care: down 47%
• Number of children waiting for adoption: down 43%
• Six-month and one-year recidivism rates: both at the lowest levels ever recorded (five-year rates have been essentially flat since 2015).

The Texas Legislature is now well into the 2025 legislative session. More reforms to the system are already being proposed. There are many holes left to be filled. In his State of the Judiciary speech before the Texas House and Senate, Supreme Court Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock spoke for several minutes about the critical importance of ensuring due process for families in the CPS system. At the state’s highest court, due process for families is now a point of critical focus.

Doubtless, not all of the positive changes in the system are attributable to the due process reforms of the last seven years, but many of them clearly are.

One thing is apparent: Texas is embracing the theory of due process in the child welfare system, and seven years in, outcomes for families and children have dramatically improved.

Jeremy Newman is vice president of Family Freedom Project.