After Friday night’s furious comeback, Texas found itself playing for its season once again in a decisive Game 3 against Alabama. This time, a rally and a win were not in the cards for the Longhorns. They lost 8-5 on Saturday, ending their postseason run. Pitcher Brooke Bolinger got the start and it looked like the pressure got to her. She walked three batters early, loading the bases. But Bolinger was able to battle through and get out of the jam. With the game scoreless, Texas avoided trouble. Defensive issues, however, came back and found Texas in the third inning. Pitcher Shealyn O’Leary was the star of Friday’s game. Saturday was a different story. Once she relieved Bolinger of her duties in the circle, O’Leary got into some trouble of her own. Center fielder Reagan Hathaway uncharacteristically dropped a pop-fly at the wall and allowed the inning to continue. Alabama’s bats came alive and instantly took advantage of the mistake. O’Leary surrendered a three-run homer to KB Sides, breaking the game open. Immediately after, Bailey Hemphill sent another ball outside the park for her 25th homer of the season, tying an Alabama single-season record by an individual. Along with O’Leary’s struggles on the mound, the Longhorns weren’t able to drive in runs and close the gap. “We gotta make her work a little bit,” Texas head coach Mike White said. “Make her work. Get the ball in the zone. When she’s in the zone, she’s hittable.” After another scoreless inning for Texas went by, third baseman Shannon Rhodes had seen enough. With the bases loaded and Texas finally gaining momentum, Rhodes sent a pitch far past the wall in deep center to cut Alabama’s lead to two. “I was just sticking to a plan,” Rhodes said. “Montana Fouts is a great pitcher and she did a great job this weekend. She gave me something a little bit off the plate, but I jumped across and hit it.” Unfortunately for Texas, that was the last run of the day. The next two innings were filled with “BAMA” chants and only one by the Longhorns. Right fielder MK Tedder had a chance to be the hero and tie the game with two runners on in the seventh, but popped up for the final out. Texas came into the game down a starting pitcher after the scary moment Friday night when Miranda Elish was hit in the face with a ball. Even without playing, the junior pitcher still impacted her team. “Today was for Miranda,” Rhodes said. “Yesterday was for Miranda. She’s given us a great fight. She deserved it all and it helps a lot when she has a team behind her to help.” Elish was able to rejoin the team and sit in the dugout. She will be re-evaluated when the team returns to Austin with the season now drawing to a close.  

The Longhorns battled back against Alabama with their backs against the wall, but fell just short of a trip to the Women’s College World Series. Just over 14 hours after last night’s game ended, the No. 9 Texas Longhorns and the No. 8 Alabama Crimson Tide met back at the ballpark on Saturday afternoon to play for a spot in the Women’s College World Series. Unfortunately, Mike White and his Longhorns squad came up just short of winning their sixth straight game facing elimination in this tournament and fell to the Crimson Tide, 8-5. Led by freshman starting pitcher Montana Fouts (7 IP, 5 Ks, 150 pitches) and their best hitter Bailey Hemphill (3-run HR), Alabama took the winner-take-all Game 3 to advance to the program’s 12th College World Series since 2000. Multiple defensive mistakes made by Texas early in the game later turned out to be costly for their late-inning comeback efforts. If not for a costly error that turned a one-run inning into a five-run inning for Alabama, Texas could be going to Oklahoma City instead. It was all positive news today for ace pitcher Miranda Elish regarding her injury. It was announced earlier that Elish only suffered an injury to her sinuses after being hospitalized from a scary play in last night’s game. She was back on the bench supporting the team today. Lefty senior pitcher Brooke Bollinger got the start on the mound in place of Elish. She came into today with a 9-4 record and 2.30 ERA on the season. The Horns couldn’t catch a break at the plate early on. Janae Jefferson was thrown out at home plate by Alabama CF Elissa Brown after trying to score on a single up-the-middle. However, after looking at the replay, it’d appeared that Jefferson clearly touched home plate before the tag was applied. Bollinger struggled with her control and got in some trouble right away. In her first inning pitched, she walked three batters to load the bases but managed to escape the jam without giving up a run. Lefty-hitter Maddie Morgan got things started for the Tide offensively with a lead-off double to open the bottom of the second. After misplaying a bunt and giving up an RBI single, which put Alabama ahead 1-0, Bollinger was pulled 1.1 innings into the game. Last night’s winning pitcher, freshman Shealyn O’Leary, replaced her on the mound in relief. With strong support from the defense behind her, O’Leary kept the deficit at 1-0 heading into the third inning. The top of Texas’ lineup made some noise again in the third inning, except this time they put a run on the board. Cleanup hitter Mary Iakopo delivered in the clutch by ripping an RBI single on a 3-2 pitch with two outs in the inning. She drove in leadoff hitter Lauren Burke from third base to tie things up at 1. Alabama regained the lead, 2-1, on a sacrifice fly in the bottom half of the inning. After an inexcusable error on a pop fly with two outs, the floodgates started to open for the Crimson Tide. Alabama took advantage of Texas’ mistake and extended a one-run inning into a five-run inning, thanks to back-to-back home runs from the heart of their order. BACK-TO-BACK HOMERS!#NCAASoftball #SCtop10 | @AlabamaSB pic.twitter.com/jPdUH0kxRn— NCAA Softball (@NCAAsoftball) May 25, 2019 Before she could get through the third, O’Leary was replaced by Arianna Adams on the mound. Alabama led 6-1 after three innings. But the fighting Longhorns weren’t done just yet. While trailing 7-1 heading into the fifth inning, the top of the order was due up for the Longhorns. And just as they did earlier in the game and in last night’s game, they delivered for Texas when it was needed the most. Burke, Jefferson, and Iakopo all reached base to the start the inning and loaded the bases up for Shannon Rhodes. Rhodes delivered with an opposite-field grand slam to bring Texas within two runs. 2 innings left. A spot in the WCWS on the line. It's now a 2-run game thanks to this @TexasSoftball grand slam pic.twitter.com/USDofyaB7I— espnW (@espnW) May 25, 2019 Alabama was able to take advantage of another defensive miscue by Texas and pushed their lead to three runs in the bottom of the sixth. It came down to the 2-3-4 hitters for the Longhorns with three outs left in their season. They were able to bring the tying run to the plate but Fouts closed out the game for Alabama on her 150th pitch of the game. Regardless of the result, first-year head coach Mike White did a tremendous job with his team this season and deserves a ton of credit for the job he did. White brought along plenty of talent with him from Oregon including players like Elish, Iakopo, and Rhodes, and helped win the program’s first Regional since 2013. While they came up one win short of their ultimate goal of reaching the CWS, there’s a bright future ahead for Texas Softball. Along with the Longhorns, the Big 12 was well-represented this weekend in the Super Regional round. No. 13 Oklahoma State knocked off the defending-champion Florida State Seminoles and No. 1 Oklahoma swept Northwestern in their series. The two Oklahoma programs will now compete for a national championship right in their home state (Oklahoma City) from May 30 - June 5 at the CWS. Gearing up for Memorial Day weekend? Why not gear up with BreakingT for their massive Memorial Day sale. With more than 200 shirts on priced at just $10, including one to proudly proclaim that Texas is, indeed, back, folks, you’ll stock your closet and save enough money to stock up on extra BBQ for Memorial Day weekend. Better yet, you’ll save an additional 20% off everything in the store by simply using the code MEMORIAL at checkout. 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And now the rape survivors who were victimized by Baylor football players under Briles have to re-live their trauma. It was bound to happen eventually — some high school or college or professional team would give disgraced former Baylor Bears head coach Art Briles another opportunity by deciding that winning matters more than integrity and student safety. After three years spent in exile, the hire of Briles was announced in a Friday evening news dump by Mount Vernon High School, his first job in the United States after the Hamilton Tiger-Cats reversed an announced decision to add Briles to the staff and he spent a 4-6 season in Italy with Guelfi Firenze. The decision by Superintendent of Schools Dr. Jason McCullough featured the typical elision of why Briles was exiled in the first place. “We are pleased to welcome Coach Briles back home to Texas,” he said. “He brings with him a wealth of not only football experience but also life experience. He is passionate about investing in the lives of young people and helping them to succeed both on the field and in life. After a thorough due diligence process and several earnest conversations, we believe our students will benefit greatly from his skills and experience.” Yeah, but is he going to play his necessary role in ensuring that any players accused of sexual assault or misconduct are held responsible by the football program, school, and law enforcement? Will the most vulnerable students at Mount Vernon “benefit greatly from his skills and experience? Briles, for his part, also failed to publicly address the key concerns, just as he’s consistently failed at every turn to take accountability for his actions or express remorse about everything that happened. He remains completely unrepentant — apologizing for his mistakes should be the baseline, the absolute baseline, for getting a second chance anywhere in public life. “I began my coaching career in the Friday night lights of Texas high school football, and I’m looking forward to returning to my roots,” Briles said. “I have learned many lessons during my time as a coach. Some lessons are born out of success and others out of failure. But they all present opportunities to grow, to learn, and to teach, as we strive for excellence both on and off the field.” Do any of those lessons he’s learned have to do with his heinous previous mistakes? Even former Baylor head coach Grant Teaff weighed in. “I have known Art Briles for over 30 years as an extremely successful high school coach and through his years as a college coach,” he said. “I have observed him as a man, husband, father, grandfather, and as a coach, always forthright and stellar.” In an even more ridiculous statement, Teaff noted that “Briles never incurred a single recruiting infraction during his time at the collegiate level.” Never mind that Kendal Briles, the former offensive coordinator for his father in Waco, was accused of using sex to entice a high school recruit to visit. “Do you like white women? Because we have a lot of them at Baylor and they love football players,” Briles allegedly told a Dallas-area prospect. Never mind that it didn’t stop there, allegedly — Baylor was accused of a “‘show ‘em a good time policy‘ that ‘used sex to sell’ the football program to recruits. That included escorting underage recruits to strip clubs and arranging women to have sex with prospective players, the suit alleges.” Never mind that “the investigation by lawyers identified at least 52 ‘acts of rape’ by 31 football players from 2011 to 2014. This included five gang rapes, at least two of which were committed by 10 or more players at one time, according to the lawsuit.” Briles claimed he didn’t know about any of this and Teaff is attempting to rehabilitate his friend’s image with no regard for the accusations made against him. Which, by the way, also date back to the days when Briles was the head coach at Stephenville, another small town in this football-crazy state. According to a Deadspin report earlier this year, a Stephenville student was sexually assaulted by a football player under Briles. She filed a police report, but the player was never charged. And here’s how Briles treated her: A star student, Dorothy was working on a student council project when she had to introduce herself to Briles to ask him a question. “When he heard my name,” she recalls, “He said, ‘So you’re the one all this fuss is about.’” Briles also claims he doesn’t remember that incident — not exactly forthright — but the father of the student, identified as Dorothy in the Deadspin report, actually confronted Briles about it. “Art didn’t handle it right,” Dorothy’s father told Deadspin. “When I found out, I went straight to his house and told him what happened. He was taken aback. He couldn’t believe it. He said, ‘What do you want me to do?’ He said it was a ‘he-said/she-said’ at this point. There was no indictment. He didn’t know what to do.” He didn’t know what to do. Not exactly stellar. That’s the man that Teaff is now defending, and a man that Mount Vernon is now entrusting to do the right thing if one of his players commits sexual assault. But there’s also another element here — the victims who suffered because of players under Briles at Baylor, the same ones who were treated so unfairly by Baylor and local law enforcement, are now re-living that trauma. “Once again, winning matters more than our safety,” one Baylor rape survivor texted Jenny Creech of the Houston Chronicle. “How can they keep doing this to us?” Here’s another rape survivor, one of a “number of brave women” who contacted Creech on Friday. “I feel sick,” she wrote. “He is going to be in charge of children. How are they letting this happen?” Because winning matters more than their safety. Shame on Mount Vernon. Shame on Teaff. And most of all, shame on Briles, who should never have another coaching job in his life so he’ll have plenty of time to think about all that continued trauma that his players visited on students who thought that Stephenville and Baylor were safe places for them. Gearing up for Memorial Day weekend? Why not gear up with BreakingT for their massive Memorial Day sale. With more than 200 shirts on priced at just $10, including one to proudly proclaim that Texas is, indeed, back, folks, you’ll stock your closet and save enough money to stock up on extra BBQ for Memorial Day weekend. Better yet, you’ll save an additional 20% off everything in the store by simply using the code MEMORIAL at checkout. Did I mention these BreakingT shirts will make an amazing Father’s Day gift?

A federal judge in California has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from transferring funds from military accounts to begin building additional border fencing. U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam in Northern California granted a preliminary injunction blocking the administration from moving $1 billion in Defense Department funds intended for anti-drug activities. The judge did not rule on an additional $3.6 billion in funds from military construction projects that have yet to be identified by the Defense Department. "The position that when Congress declines the Executive's request to appropriate funds, the Executive nonetheless may simply find a way to spend those funds 'without Congress' does not square with fundamental separation of powers principles dating back to the earliest days of our Republic," Gilliam wrote. The ACLU sued to block the transfer on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition. Gilliam has set the next conference in the case