Texas softball: Is ace Teagan Kavan ready for NCAA Tournament after heavy pitching load?

White delivered those comments with a grin, because he understands the toll that innings can take on an arm as much as any coach in the college game. He’s a former pitcher at the professional and international level in men’s fastpitch softball, and knows the physical and mental grind that can come with serving as a team’s ace.

“We always ask the question, ‘How you feeling?’ ” White said, when considering whether Kavan or any other pitcher needs to take on a bigger burden. “We want to make sure that she's in on it and that it's her idea.”

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Teagan Kavan: Workload increasing late in year

That’s one reason that White has avoided giving Kavan the heavy workload that other college pitching stars often carry. Kavan’s 18⅔ innings at the SEC Tournament is the most she’s thrown over a three-day span in her three-year collegiate career. Her 280 pitches in those three days is just five short of the career-high she threw in a three-game, three-day series against Clemson in last season’s Austin Super Regional series, which Texas won 2-1 to set up its title run at the Women’s College World Series.

“I was just trying to compete and compete for my teammates, no matter what the score was going to be,” Kavan told reporters after the win over Alabama. “I wrote down in my journal win pretty or win ugly, whatever it took to get the win.”

White doesn’t want to throw Kavan that many innings in that short a span no matter how pretty the results. But her performance at the SEC Tournament helps alleviate any concerns if and when the Longhorns need to turn to Kavan for an extended stretch in the NCAA Tournament, which begins this weekend for Texas at the Austin Regional at McCombs Field. In those 18⅔ innings in Lexington, Ky, Kavan gave up a total of 11 hits and five runs while striking out 24 batters and issuing just two walks.

“It does give me a lot of confidence that we were able to throw her multiple innings (in three days),” White said.

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NCAA softball tournament: How much action will Teagan Kavan see in Austion Regional?

Kavan seems to be getting stronger as the season wears on. Her second-highest workload of the year came a week before the SEC Tournament, when she threw 265 pitches across three days and 16⅓ innings in a 2-1 series loss to Arkansas and gave up a total of seven hits and three runs while striking out 18 batters and issuing just four walks. Those two busy weekends have helped drop her ERA to 2.65, the lowest since the Longhorns began a grueling stretch of SEC play at the start of April against ranked teams that included Alabama, Oklahoma, Georgia and Arkansas.

Texas probably won’t need Kavan to work extra this weekend, since the top-seeded and sixth-ranked Longhorns (42-10) are heavy favorites to advance out of a region that also includes Wisconsin, Baylor and Wagner.

Still, White and his staff kept Kavan busy during the five days between the SEC championship game and Friday’s NCAA Tournament opener against Wagner.

“Our first thing is to make sure she's going to be rested and ready to go,” White said. “But you also can't shut her down either, because then that'd be the one of the worst things you got to keep. You keep her active; you just got to kind of count the number of pitches that she's throwing and how often she's throwing and just let her soreness be a guide to what we want to do.”