All eyes will be on the Super Regional in Knoxville when two of the country’s best pitchers take the circle for Tennessee and Nebraska.

Tennessee, 43-14, and Nebraska, 42-13, will open a best-of-three series at 7 p.m. today, May 23, with first pitch set for 7 p.m. at Lee Softball Stadium and a national broadcast on ESPN2. Saturday’s game is set for 5 p.m. on ESPN. An if-necessary game will be held Sunday at a time to be determined. The winner of the Super Regional earns a berth in the Women’s College World Series (WCWS).

It’s a primetime matchup of Tennessee’s Karlyn Pickens and Nebraska’s Jordy Bahl.

“I think it says even more about college softball,” Tennessee coach Karen Weekly said. “And every year you think, ‘It can’t get any better, it can’t get any more competitive, it can’t draw any more attention, it can’t be in the limelight any more than it is.’ And here we are.”

The Lady Vols took care of business at home last weekend in the Knoxville Regional. Nebraska traveled to the Baton Rouge Regional – where Southeastern Louisiana took out host LSU – and kept the Super Regional from being a matchup of SEC teams by beating UConn and then Southeastern Louisiana twice.

While the Lady Vols have veterans in the lineup, a lot of youngsters have spots, too, in freshmen Saviya Morgan, Emma Clarke and Ella Dodge and sophomore Gabby Leach. The SEC is a trial-by-fire learning experience for young players.

“We have three true freshmen – might as well consider Gabby Leach a freshman in terms of the number of reps she got last year,” Weekly said. “We knew in the beginning of the season that it was going to take them some time, but we really felt like it would pay off.

“I think that’s what we started to see last weekend is just the failures are what you learn from. And they’ve been able to experience those failures, but they all have a get right back up and go mindset, and we’re starting to see the fruition of that.”

Preparing the field for NCAA softball is a form of art for the field crew. (Tennessee Athletics)

Bahl is a two-way player for Nebraska and leads the team in hitting at .475 and home runs at 23 in the batter’s box. In the circle, she is 25-6 on the season with a 1.50 ERA and 270 strikeouts.

The Lady Vol hitters will need to pick when to be aggressive and when to be patient. Situational hitting with runners on base will be critical as scoring chances can’t be squandered against the Cornhuskers.

It’s critical,” Weekly said. “In situational hitting, in terms of can you take an at-bat to eight, nine, 10 or 11 pitches? Can you just stay in there and keep battling and battling and battling and put enough balls in play consecutively that you have a chance to make something happen?

“Draw your walks when they come, get your hit-by-pitches when they come your way. Every little thing matters. We talked this season a lot about buying into those little things and celebrating those little things. And this is the weekend that it’s going to be most necessary.”

Weekly’s full session with the media on Thursday can be watched HERE.

Tennessee shook off a sluggish end to the regular season and got on track in the Knoxville Regional with wins against Miami of Ohio and then Ohio State twice.

“I think we turned the page, and we didn’t let the ups and downs of the season linger with us,” Weekly said. “Every SEC coach is going to tell you that the key is how does your team handle the grind of the SEC. You can let it beat you down, or you can let it be a set of experiences that are going to help you moving forward.”

Commencement ceremonies at Tennessee wrapped up last weekend, but the softball players who would have walked across the stage were a tad busy. The staff and team produced a ceremony for them anyway.

The Super Regional will be the final games at Lee Stadium in the 2025 season as it’s win and go to Oklahoma City for the WCWS or lose and stop playing.

The SEC is well-represented in the Super Regional setups, and the conference is guaranteed to get three teams to Oklahoma City because six are playing each other this weekend – Alabama at Oklahoma; Georgia at Florida; and Arkansas at Ole Miss.

No. 1 seed Texas A&M was upset in its home regional last weekend by Liberty – the first time a No. 1 seed didn’t survive a regional in 20 years of the NCAA tourney format.

Other matchups of SEC teams in Super Regionals are Texas at Clemson and South Carolina at UCLA.

“I think college softball is in an incredible place,” Karen Weekly said. “I’m really proud of the program. It’s been 24 years here with my husband and I for 20 and then the last four years me in this role. But it’s not about us. It’s about 24 years – and actually 30 years, because this program was around before us – of amazing young women to come through this program, amazing assistant coaches and staff members.

“It takes a village. It takes everybody. But really it’s all about the players and I hope our alums really take a lot of pride when they watch us this weekend, and they watch what softball has become at Tennessee, because they’re the ones that started the legacy and tradition.”

Maria M. Cornelius, a senior writer/editor at MoxCar Marketing + Communications since 2013, started her journalism career at the Knoxville News Sentinel and began writing about the Lady Vols in 1998. In 2016, she published her first book, “The Final Season: The Perseverance of Pat Summitt,” through The University of Tennessee Press.