What Patrick Murphy Regrets About Recruitment of Texas Ace

TUSCALOOSA, Ala.— Alabama and the state of Iowa are separated by about 800 miles, but there are plenty of connections to the state in the Crimson Tide softball program, starting with head coach Patrick Murphy.

Multiple members of the support staff are from Iowa along with infielder Jena Young. Alexis Pupillo is from Illinois, but started her collegiate career at Northern Iowa. If someone is a good softball player or coach from the state of Iowa, there's a good chance Murphy knows about them, and that was no different with Teagan Kavan.

This weekend Kavan will travel to Rhoads Stadium as a member of the No. 1 Texas Longhorns going up against Alabama ace Jocelyn Briski, but there was a possibility the two junior pitchers could have shared the same dugout.

"When she was being recruited, she was coming to Alabama on a visit," Murphy said Wednesday. "It was a Thursday night, and she was flying in. She’s from Des Moines, Iowa. I’m from Iowa, so I knew about her. A lot of people told me about her. Thursday night at about 10 o’clock, I got a text message from her mom, ‘Would you call me?’ And I was like, ‘Uh oh. That’s not good.’ And she said, ‘Our flight’s been cancelled.’"

There are no direct flights between Des Moines and Birmingham, Alabama, which is the closest commercial airport to Tuscaloosa. However, Murphy really wanted Kavan to be able to visit campus.

"I got off right away, and I called my director of ops, and I was like, ‘We have to get this kid in. How are we going to do this?’" Murphy said. "And there was like one option, and it was Southwest through Kansas City, but it left at like 5 a.m. Des Moines to Kansas City is like 3.5 hours. It was now already 10:30, and they were probably going to have to leave their house at like 2 a.m. or earlier even. I just did not want to do that to them, to us. I didn’t think it’d be a really good visit because they’d be as tired as could be. So we said, ‘We’ll reschedule.’

"And unfortunately, there was never a reschedule. So we didn’t get to have her on campus, which I regret."

Kavan would go on to commit to Mike White to play for Texas. She helped lead the Longhorns to the their first national title in program history last season, not allowing a single earned run during Texas' entire stint at the Women's College World Series. She was named the MVP of the WCWS and earned NFCA Second Team All-American honors.

This season, Kavan has a 13-1 record with a 2.44 ERA. Her only loss on the year came last time out against rival Texas A&M when the Aggies tagged her for eight runs on 11 hits over 5.2 innings.

"Yesterday we watched how they hit her, what they did," Alabama home-run leader Brooke Wells said. "Kind of looked at their plans and stuff like that. I know we’re kind of looking into that right now and figuring out our plans ourselves about how we’re about to attack that.”

It will be a battle between two of the best teams and pitchers in the country when No. 5 Alabama and No. 1 Texas meet at Rhoads Stadium for a three-game series that will make a serious impact on the top of the SEC standings. Briski is 13-0 on the season for the Crimson Tide with a 1.28 ERA. The two will likely start for their respective teams in Games 1 and 3 of the series.

"She’s doing great things from them," Murphy said of Kavan. "Happy for her. Obviously a national champion last year. Number one, she’s a really good pitcher. I’m proud of the fact that she’s from Iowa, and she’s doing really well."

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