Texas softball might have homefield advantage for the Austin Super Regional against Arizona State University, but the Sun Devils aren’t letting themselves get starstruck — they want to leave Red & Charline McCombs Field with a series win and a ticket to the Women’s College World Series.

“We’re playing with house money, we have nothing to lose,” senior right-handed pitcher Kenzie Brown said. “I don’t think anyone besides this team and our university thought that we’d make it this far, so it’s just a really special moment being able to play and compete at this level.

This weekend will be the battle of the conference champions, with Arizona State claiming the Big 12 Champions trophy over the Texas Tech Raiders and Texas winning its first Southeastern Conference title over Alabama’s Crimson Tide earlier this month.

Both teams showed their strengths during the regional round of the tournament, each picking up three victories and no losses to advance into the super regionals.

The Sun Devils have been electric since the end of the regular season, punching their ticket to Austin with a 9-1 run-rule upset over regional host, Texas A&M. To send her team to the next round of the tournament, senior infielder Brooklyn Ulrich hit a walk-off grand slam to end the Aggies’ season early.

Head coach Megan Bartlett has full confidence that this team can pull off yet another upset to appear in its first WCWS since 2018.

“This group is dangerous, they are talented, they are driven, and they’re feisty” Bartlett said.

While this isn’t home for Bartlett, walking through the halls of the Texas softball training facility feels familiar. From 2021 to the end of the 2022 season, Bartlett was an assistant coach under the Longhorns’ head coach Mike White.

Bartlett had two years to pick White’s brain and learn his strategy before now facing him for the first time, now also as a head coach. Even with the past connection, she knows White, or “Whitey” as she jokingly calls him, is a fierce competitor and won’t give her or her team an easy time.

“We are not going to take it easy on each other, and he wouldn’t expect anything less, but I do love Coach (White),” Bartlett said. “I think that we had some really nice balance. I helped him speak 18 to 22 year old girl; he taught me a lot about winning at the elite level.”

White knows that winning two games to advance to Oklahoma City will be a challenge. In addition to both teams having top batters in their lineups, Arizona State has a pitcher in its arsenal who rivals Texas junior right-handed pitcher Teagan Kavan.

Kavan is a former Tournament MOP and All-American, who the rest of the Longhorns will look to in a difficult series.

“They’re carbon copies,” White said. “They’re very similar in what they do, they hide the ball well, they move the ball up and down with a good changeup, and they’re competitors.”

In the Austin Regional, Kavan pitched two shutouts, accumulating 13 strikeouts in 12 innings against Wisconsin and Baylor. With an ERA of 2.47, Kavan’s riseball is lethal against batters — a pitch she’s relied on heavily since the SEC Tournament.

Just over 100 miles east last weekend, Brown flourished under the pressure of upsetting Texas A&M at the College Station Regional. She threw eight strikeouts and only allowed the Aggies to score two earned runs, handing Texas A&M two losses, tossing them from the tournament.

White, who was a top pitcher on U.S. National Teams, is aware that when Brown enters the circle, hits are difficult to come by, and when she gets hot, batting lineups struggle. In this week’s preparations for the series, he put his retired throwing skills to use and tested his batters’ abilities to hit a number of complicated pitches.

“Coach White threw to us this week from I don’t even know how close it was,” senior catcher Reese Atwood said. “(He was) just humming the ball in at us. Just being able to have that quick reaction time and hit off his riseball, which is very dirty.”

Texas’ hitting followed an upward trajectory the deeper they got into the Austin Regional. In its first game against Wagner College, the Longhorns only managed to send one ball past the outfield wall, courtesy of freshman pitcher and utility Hannah Wells. However, on Sunday, the Longhorns hit four home runs, two of them bombs off the bat of junior infielder and the program’s single-season home run record holder, Katie Stewart.

Texas will need that kind of firepower when going up against a team like Arizona State, which has faced some of the best teams in the country.

While rain is in the forecast all weekend, Friday’s game is scheduled to start at 8 p.m. CT, with the first pitch of game two scheduled for Saturday at 7 p.m. CT.