With a 4-1 victory over Arkansas, Saturday marked the end of Texas softball’s regular season. Now, headed into postseason play, head coach Mike White is just focused on the 2026 Southeastern Conference Softball Tournament and winning a conference championship in Lexington, Ky.

“You've got to win four games,” White said on Saturday after assuming that the Longhorns missed out on a double bye in the upcoming tournament after dropping the Arkansas series. “We’ve got to play better all around.

Despite losing the Oklahoma, Alabama and Arkansas series, Texas never allowed a sweep and recorded a conference record of 16-8. Once resigned to a challenging road, Longhorn’s consistency boosts them into the fourth seed in the tournament, shortening the road to the SEC championship to three games.

It took a two-round tiebreak to decide which 16-8 team would land the double bye. Texas took the Lone Star Series against Texas A&M earlier this season, which left it up to a comparison between the Longhorns’ and the Lady Volunteers’ win-loss percentage, combined with their highest-seeded opponent, to decide who would have an automatic bid to the quarterfinals. Texas A&M and Tennessee must begin their journeys in the second round of the bracket, playing into the quarterfinals.

The potential opponents for the Longhorns in their first game on Thursday are the Ole Miss Rebels, the South Carolina Gamecocks, and the Tennessee Lady Volunteers. South Carolina and Ole Miss, seeded 12th and 13th, respectively, were swept by the Longhorns in the first two conference series of the season. The Rebels only have six conference wins under their belt; the Gamecocks have seven.

Despite being seeded higher, the Tennessee Lady Volunteers couldn’t find the momentum to beat the Ole Miss Rebels on Wednesday, losing the second round game 4-1, and only registering four hits through the full seven innings.

“Sometimes you kind of forget that this is really a hard game,” White said. “Good pitching means good hitting, and we have really good pitching in the SEC.”

Going into the tournament, White was preparing to face Tennessee’s senior right-handed pitcher and No. 1 pick in the 2026 AUSL Draft, Karlyn Pickens. However, upsets are common in the tournament, so Texas will have to regroup and face the team it swept and run-ruled twice in early March.

The Longhorns will likely face right-handed senior pitchers Kyra Aycock or Emilee Boyer in Thursday’s game. Aycock posted the best score against the Longhorns in the regular season, conceding just three earned runs during the first game.

However, Boyer didn’t bring the same fire in her Saturday start at Red & Charline McCombs Field, giving up seven earned runs in three innings. It didn’t get better for her on Sunday either. After entering the circle as relief for the last 1.2 innings, she gave up four earned runs, allowing the Longhorns to win 15-3 and end the diamond early in a mercy rule.

While the Longhorns enter familiar territory with their first game against the Rebels, Texas will have to get its bats going if it wants any chance at advancing further into the tournament. Against ranked opponents, the Longhorns have struggled to string together enough hits to dominate. In the first game against Arkansas, Texas could only rack up four hits and was unable to capitalize on any of them, being shutout by the Razorbacks. While Texas was able to register more hits in the following two games, the SEC tournament is unforgiving — losing just one game means being tossed from the bracket.

Against Oklahoma State in a non-conference midweek game earlier this month, Texas recorded a season low of two hits and no runs against the Cowgirls’ ace, despite a strong showing from Texas’ No. 2 right-handed pitcher, senior Citlaly Gutierrez.

“Citlaly (Gutierrez) pitched well enough to win, we just didn’t give any offensive support early on, and it kind of exposed the fact that we were just waiting for things to happen,” White said. “We weren’t aggressively taking care of pitches.”

After the Oklahoma State game, Texas took on Kentucky away from Red & Charline McCombs Field, and it looked like the batting order had gotten its mojo back. However, the first game against Arkansas told a different story.

“We’re swinging at crap,” White said. “We’re taking good pitches and swinging at junk.”

Atwood, a power hitter who set the program record for career home runs at the home opener in February, hasn’t been able to send her balls past the outfield wall. After hitting a four-bagger against Alabama on April 4, it wasn’t until April 25 against Kentucky that she would hit her next. She hasn’t hit a homer since.

Reese Atwood has been one of the most powerful bats in NCAA Softball for three years running.

Even with the struggles behind the plate, Texas still has a higher on-base percentage with a .441 compared to Tennessee’s .402, and beats Tennessee in the slugging percentage by .15 points.

Even though an SEC Championship doesn’t look promising for the Longhorns based on their regular-season performance, Texas is still determined to win another national championship and be stronger than last year.

“Quite honestly, I think our season last year, we faced more adversity, so I think we’re never out of it,” Texas’ right-handed junior ace, Teagan Kavan, said. “Although we ended on a high, it wasn’t always a high during the season. I think the road ahead is unknown, and anyone can get hot at any moment, and anyone can win a ball game at any point; the game doesn’t know.”

The Texas Longhorns will play the Ole Miss Rebels at 4 p.m. CT at John Cropp Stadium to advance to the semifinals.