Tennessee softball’s 2026 NCAA Tournament run will begin this weekend in Knoxville. Virginia, Indiana and Northern Kentucky will all travel to Sherri Parker Lee Stadium for the Knoxville Regional. One team will advance to the super regionals afterward.
Ahead of the event, Lady Vols head coach Karen Weekly met with the media to give her thoughts on the matchups. She was asked about the challenges teams present, how the bracket was seeded, what her team needs to improve on and more.
Here’s what she said.
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On what stands out about Northern Kentucky
“I mean, the first thing is, everybody in a regional is good. They have earned their way here, whether it’s through the body work the whole season or a really hot run at their conference tournament, they’re playing their best softball. Northern Kentucky is a scrappy team. They steal a lot of bases. They’re just really pesky in their ability to get on base, not a big power team, but when you watch them on film, it’s like just a lot of balls just fall in, and then when they get on bases, they can make some things happen.
“They’re going to have some pitching that’s different for us. Nobody throws real high velo, which you know isn’t necessarily easy when you’re used to seeing pretty high velo like we do in the SEC. So we’re going to have to do a really good job of getting on time with what they’re pitching. They’ve got a lefty who’s got their most innings, you know, we’ve done fairly well against limited lefties we’ve seen, but you don’t see a ton of lefties throughout the season. So there’s going to be some different things about them that we’re going to have to be really, really locked in on.”
On the biggest advantage of hosting a regional
“It’s just the comfort of your daily routine, obviously, sleeping in your own bed, where you like to go, the places you like to eat, just your game day routine. You know exactly what it’s like coming into your own locker room, walking out onto your own field, all of those things. And then, the big difference maker is the fan base. I mean, we are so blessed here to have such an incredible fan base that shows up and sells that place out, and tickets are being scalped and sold for double, triple, four times what they’re worth online, things like that. So just a really, really passionate fan base that really appreciates how hard these young women work and they support them very loudly.”
On what challenges Virginia presents
“I think when you talk about two-seeds, you could put Indiana in there as well, I mean, that’s a really good team that a lot of people had predicted might make it into that 32-seeded teams. So I feel like we have two teams that are seeds. Virginia mirrors us in so many ways. I mean, I put the numbers up for everybody in our region and probably the one where we’ve got a little bit of an advantage is the pitching, but their pitching has really, really been good. I mean, I think their team ERA is, like, mid twos, or something like that, which is really good when you consider the average. I think I heard the average ERA now is above four, right?
“So if you’re living in the mid twos, upper twos, you’re doing really good things. And the ACC is a good conference. I think Joanna (Hardin) has done a great job there. I think the consistency that they’ve been showing over the time she’s been there really speaks to the talent they have and how well coached and well prepared they are. They’re a lot like us. And you know, it’s crazy how our power numbers almost mirror each other. Our extra bases almost mirror each other. Our defensive statistics almost mirror each other. So really, really solid team.
“And I think they do a good job, even more so than we last saw them here, of using their pictures and using a full staff. Eden Bigham was a force to be reckoned with a couple years ago, and I don’t even think she’s got the most innings on their staff right now. So that just tells you they have more pitchers. They’re going deeper. You’re not going to see anybody three times through the lineup. And that’s a challenge in and of itself.”
On how to win games when teams are so similar
“Well, I firmly believe that games are lost, not won, and especially at this time of year. And by that, it’s the team that flinches first. You know, you typically can look back at a game and see where an error was made, or a free pass followed by an error, things like that. You’re not going to see scoring in inning after inning after inning after inning when you get to postseason play, but what you will see when the team wins is they were able to put together enough things to put up a crooked number in an inning, or maybe two innings, or, heck, if you’re lucky, three innings, and then keep the other team from putting up those numbers.
“We’ve been working a lot this week on defense, a lot, a lot, because I think that’s such a big factor this time of year that maybe goes undervalued. Everybody wants to talk about hitting and pitching, but you know, if you can play clean defense and you can get it out every time the ball is put in play, you got a great chance to win. So when you look at teams that statistically look pretty even to me, that’s what it comes down to, is who’s going to play clean softball.”
On jumping on teams early
“Well, the big thing for us offensively is to be committed to our game plan early on. So, whether we jump on the scoreboard from the start or we don’t, what I want to see is that we’re following our game plan from the first batter on, and we build some momentum doing that right away. Because I feel like if we can create momentum doing that, we’re going to break through. And that’s been a big focus this week. We’ve done a lot of live since we got back from the SEC Tournament to really get our hitters committed to okay, yes, you might be facing Sage. This is your plan today against Sage, and really just evaluating how committed are we saying to that plan, regardless of the results. If we do that, we’re going to score soon enough and at least build momentum towards that.”
On what the team needs to do offensively
“That’s been the biggest thing from a tactical, strategical standpoint, because I think that’s what we didn’t do well against Ole Miss. And when you look at the games where we struggled, what we haven’t done well is maybe getting a little bit emotionally attached to the results, rather than just evaluating the at-bat based on ‘Did you follow the game plan?’ That it’s as simple as that, and understanding its success when you do that, it doesn’t matter what just happened in the at-bat. That’s a quality of when you have gone up there and stayed true to the game plan, and then I think this time of year, it’s just building the confidence, just reinforcing, ‘Hey, we’re a top-eight seed for a reason. We’ve earned it. We have a really good ball club. We took two out of three from the number one seed.’ There’s so many things to just remind yourself why we’re good, why we have an opportunity to do anything in this postseason.”
On what the defensive focus is
“For us, it’s playing with our eyes. So it’s partly communication, but a lot of it is just, we’ll tend to rush plays and instead of really just looking the ball in, now our eyes are going to the throw. So we talk a lot about playing with your eyes, and your eyes on the ball through transition. And then this week, it’s I said, ‘Hey, even more specifically, I want you to be able to pick out a seam on that ball with your eyes.’ And when we play that way, it’s crazy, because they probably feel slow, but everything is so much better. Like slow is smooth. Move as fast as we can, tend to get moving a little too quick and try to rush plays and then we blow them.”
On pitcher Sage Mardjetko
“I think when you look at Sage over the season, she’s been phenomenal. I mean, every pitcher, every athlete, is going to have that day where maybe they’re not on and she’s had a day or two where just struggled to find the strike zone. I think for all of them, if you asked tomorrow, what was going through your head when that happened, there’d be something that maybe they were a little frustrated with, and they didn’t just let go of it real quickly, whether they didn’t get a call or something a batter was doing or omething a play behind them, that you just have to let go of things and flush it and move on. And I think that’s the biggest thing for Sage, she’s been in that space 95% of the time this year, and when she stays there, she’s phenomenal.”
On how the committee seeded the bracket this year
“Oh, I think definitely seeding one through 32 made a difference. Yeah, I think in the past, you look at a regional and go, ‘Wow, that one is stacked, and that one’s pretty light.’ Because when geography was your biggest parameter, after you see that you’re 16, that was just going to happen. And I think this year, you look at it and you say, that’s pretty more evenly distributed. Now geography is still the biggest parameter with the threes and fours, which is why I pretty much knew we were going to get Indiana. And I’m like, that’s a really, really, really good three. But we’ve always had a regional like that. We’ve always had a pretty tough regional because there’s so many good teams within a 400-mile radius of Knoxville.”
On losing in the first game of the SEC Tournament the last three years, the differing results in the NCAA Tournament
“I don’t see a difference in terms of both teams lost at the SEC and then one team went on to the World Series. One team, I continue to go back to the ’24 team, possibly our most talented team here in recent years, a team that you know you felt like on paper, they can win a national championship. And I just think everything went so well for that team that year, except losing at the SEC Tournament. We did not have adversity. I can point to adverse moments in ’23, adverse moments in ’25, certainly adverse moments this year.
“And I think every team that’s going to achieve anything needs to experience some adversity, and we didn’t have any in ’24 until it got to Supers, and really had hardened our skills in that respect. Kind of taught me as a coach, sometimes you have to create the adversity. You got to make something happen in that respect, in order for your team to go through it, continue with adversity.”
On the adverse moment the team went through this year
“We probably had a few, but I think coming off the 26-0 start and then managing losing a couple games that we felt like we should have won, like we beat ourselves and then kind of that Ole Miss series was probably the low point in terms of just how we were playing. But then really trying to take a step back and understand we’re not going to hit the panic button here. And I think with a young team, that was the hardest thing is we don’t start to question who we are, and are we really good enough, and can we really do this?
“Almost like this imposter syndrome thing. You look at the teams we beat to get to 26-0, those are some really good teams, and we showed we could play really good ball. So I think it’s been one moment in the season might have highlighted the adversity, but it’s sort of been this process of getting this really young group of people to continue to believe in themselves and believe in us as a team, that we have what it takes.”
On Emma Clarke having WCWS experience
“Emma is such an eager learner. Like everything you give her, she wants to do it right then and be really good at it right then, and she’s going to push herself. And sometimes I think we have to recognize, I have to recognize, not to feed her too much too soon, because she wants to be great, she wants to be a great player, she wants to be a great leader, and she’s going to own the responsibility of all of those things. And, you know, it’s like, I was telling her the other day, we were talking about her leadership, and I said, ‘You know, leadership is something that you’re doing really well at, but it takes time to get better. It takes experience.’
“It’s like I told her I could take a six-month-old kid and hold their hands up and prop them up on their feet and tell them to walk. Well, they’re not going to walk. They’re going to continue to fall down. It’s not till probably their 12 months to 18 months that they’re actually going to walk, no matter how many times I put them on their feet and try to make them walk. So giving herself a little bit of grace that she’s doing all the things we need. But with this young, young team, it’s more incumbent upon me and our coaching staff to provide the leadership and the direction, and then really rely on our leadership council to be more of a liaison with the team and make sure that you know we’re tuned into what the team’s feeling and what they need at the time.”
