Blazing Semifinals draws for Texas Tech WCWS

Monday night at 6 p.m. on ESPN, Texas Tech will play either No. 2 Oklahoma or No. 16 Oregon.

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. Every day, Texas Tech’s historic season seems to add a new, important story.
The Red Raiders beat UCLA 3-1 on Saturday night to move on to the semifinals of the Women’s College World Series. For Monday night’s 6 p.m. ESPN game, the winner between No. 2 seed Oklahoma and No. 16 Oregon will play Texas Tech. The Red Raiders will wait for the winner of that game. First, let’s take a look at the Red Raiders’ place in football history and then at what could happen on Monday.

IN TEXAS TECHNOLOGY, WHERE THIS RUN FITS IN

Everyone knows that the Red Raiders are going to the Women’s College World Series for the first time. This makes the 2025 Red Raider softball team one of the best in Texas Tech history (in any sport).
The Red Raiders will be trying to win their fourth team national title in the program’s history.

They broke the nets for the national title in women’s basketball in 1993 and won two national titles in men’s track and field, most recently at the indoor championships in 2024. Texas Tech’s run in Oklahoma City adds to the recent success of the athletics department. Since 2015, Texas Tech softball has become the ninth school to finish in the top eight in the country for its sport.

In 2019, Texas Tech finished in the semifinals of the Men’s College World Series, advanced to the National Championship Game for men’s basketball earlier that same year, and has competed in the match play portion of the NCAA Golf Championships three times (twice for men and once for women).

Most recently, they won two national titles in men’s track and field. Between the men’s and women’s track and field teams, the program has placed in the top eight eleven times in the last ten years.

In WCWS’s rare company history, Glasco appears.

A lot has been said about how Gerry Glasco has changed things since becoming head coach of Texas Tech last summer.

In less than a year, he took the Red Raiders from the NCAA postseason’s edges to Oklahoma City.
Glasco quickly changed Texas Tech’s roster. She kept key players like outfielder Demi Elder and the country’s best recruiting class while adding All-American pitcher NiJaree Canady and All-Big 12 first team winners Mihyia Davis and Alana Johnson, among others.

That group of players has come together to form one of the best teams in the country, especially late in the season.

Texas Tech comes into the WCWS semifinals on the heels of an 11-game winning streak that began with its last Big 12 series at BYU.
Texas Tech’s “firsts” include getting a national spot, hosting the NCAA Lubbock Regional, and making it to its first-ever NCAA Super Regional, where the Red Raiders beat Florida State in two games on the road.

It has been two wins for Texas Tech already this week in Oklahoma City. This is another “first,” this time for Glasco.
It is the first time since Hall of Fame coach Yvette Girouard at LSU in 2001 that a first-year head coach has made it to the WCWS quarterfinals.

Like Glasco, Girouard left a successful Louisiana school for a new one. During her time in Baton Rouge, she led the Tigers to four straight WCWS appearances. LSU had to get past an early loss to Stanford to make it to the 2001 playoffs.

They beat Iowa and Oklahoma before losing to UCLA in 13 innings to end the season. Since the first WCWS in 1982, Glasco is only the sixth first-year head coach to make it to the playoffs.

There are also two Nebraska head coaches on that list: Wayne Daigle (1984) and Ron Wolforth (1987). There is also Lou Piel at South Carolina (1983) and Sue Enquist at UCLA, who led the Bruins to nine WCWS appearances and three wins during her Hall of Fame career.

The only head coaches to make it to the WCWS quarterfinals in their first year were Glasco and Enquist, who won their first two games in Oklahoma City.

UCLA won the national title in Oklahoma City by going 5-0, with Enquist and Sharron Backus as co-head coaches. This was the second time in three years that UCLA had won the trophy.

A HIGHLIGHT WORTHY PLAY

People all over the world talked about Texas Tech’s brave move to steal home with two outs in the fifth inning on Saturday night.

Since Saturday, Makayla Garcia’s game-winning run has been seen more than 3.2 million times on Texas Tech’s softball accounts, which means she has been seen on more than every social media site in less than 24 hours.

However, that doesn’t include the extra contacts the Red Raiders have gotten since ESPN, Major League Baseball, and the NCAA Softball account shared the play.