{"id":130699,"date":"2026-01-20T18:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T18:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/130699\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T18:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T18:44:08","slug":"texas-tied-at-no-1-with-texas-tech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/130699\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas tied at No. 1 with Texas Tech"},"content":{"rendered":"

In arguably the most prestigious of the college softball polls, Texas softball <\/a>topped the ESPN\/USA Softball preseason rankings for the first time in school history.<\/p>\n

But the ranking comes with a caveat: the Longhorns, who won the program\u2019s first national championship last season, are tied with Texas Tech atop the poll ahead of No. 3 Oklahoma, No. 4 Tennessee and No. 5 Oregon. Both Texas and Texas Tech tallied 611 points from the voters, with Texas receiving 14 first-place votes compared to 11 for the Red Raiders.<\/p>\n

Nine other SEC teams join Texas, Oklahoma and Tennessee in the preseason ESPN\/USA Softball poll, including No. 11 Texas A&M.<\/p>\n

The Longhorns welcome back six of their nine starters from the team that beat Texas Tech<\/a> in the three-game championship series at the 2025 Women\u2019s College World Series. That includes ace pitcher\u00a0Teagan Kavan<\/a>, who leads a deep UT pitching staff.<\/p>\n

Texas Tech, which topped Softball America\u2019s preseason poll<\/a>, counters with star pitcher NiJaree Canady and a roster bolstered by several high-profile transfer portal additions.<\/p>\n

The Longhorns open the season Feb. 6 at the UTSA Invitational against No. 9 Nebraska in San Antonio.<\/p>\n

Others receiving votes:\u00a0Arizona State (27), Virginia (25), Ohio State (23), Grand Canyon (22), Florida Atlantic (19), Auburn (16), UCF (7), BYU (2), Michigan (2), Missouri (1), Northwestern (1)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In arguably the most prestigious of the college softball polls, Texas softball topped the ESPN\/USA Softball preseason rankings…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[46014,56161,27,29,537,28703,28,415],"class_list":{"0":"post-130699","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-college-softball","9":"tag-teagan-kavan","10":"tag-texas","11":"tag-texas-headlines","12":"tag-texas-longhorns","13":"tag-texas-longhorns-softball","14":"tag-texas-news","15":"tag-texas-tech-red-raiders"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}