Being frank, NiJaree Canady hasn’t been perfect in recent outings. But, it looks like she might be getting back to her 2025 form. Or at least that’s what her head coach (and the rest of the world) saw from Texas Tech softball’s star pitcher as the Red Raiders eliminated the Alabama Crimson Tide on Sunday night.
When Texas Tech needed Canady to step up against the Crimson Tide in a win-or-go-home situation after beating Alabama earlier in the evening, Texas Tech got one heck of a performance from her. Canady managed to go a complete game, pitching in all seven innings and striking out six batters in the process.
She did allow a couple of hits and did walk a batter, but the Red Raiders got a remarkable performance from Canady as she outdueled the pitching duo of Alabama’s Jocelyn Briski and Vic Morten. And that mattered because Texas Tech may have gotten 10 hits and a couple of walks against Briski and Morten, but the Red Raiders only scored two runs on Sunday.
So, Canady shutting down Alabama’s bats? That was huge.
Texas Tech head coach Gerry Glasco notes that NiJaree Canady just had her best performance of the season against Alabama
And Texas Tech softball fans weren’t the only ones impressed with how Canady showed up and dominated. Gerry Glasco also noted that she was performing as she had during the 2025 run for the Red Raiders.
“NiJa, that was the 2025 version of NiJaree Canady,” Glasco stated in his postgame press conference. “We’ve been on this plan, that’s how we started. We took the whole Fall off and we said we’ll peak in May and we’re going to peak at the World Series.”
It looks like that plan is working out exactly as it needed to. That sort of deliberate workload management is huge for Canady after she pitched a total of 240 innings last season. In 2025, Canady delivered 23 complete games for the Red Raiders. That’s just an insane amount of work.
It’s important that Glasco and the Red Raiders haven’t put her in that same sort of position again this season. With the addition of Kaitlyn Terry, Texas Tech has been able to really spread the workload around in a way that’s been meaningful.
“I don’t have any doubt that was her best performance of the year and that’s a great confidence builder for our team and for NiJa to go into the finals with that effort,” Glasco said.
And if Canady is starting to perform at an increasingly higher level now in the biggest games of the season, then the Red Raiders have a very real chance of a national title this year.
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