2013 NCAA Regionals -- Who's Advanced, Who's Still Alive, Who's Been Eliminated

SUNDAY NIGHT UPDATE

The regionals are now complete, with the match-ups set for next weekend's super-regionals. Winners of each regional are shown in the table below in bold.

Heading into the final day of a regional, there is always one team per region with a 2-0 record, one with a 2-1 record, and two teams eliminated. The team with the 2-0 record needs only one win to advance to the super-regionals, whereas the team entering the final day at 2-1 must beat the previously undefeated team twice. Five teams that entered Sunday's play with one loss (Hofstra, Virginia Tech, South Alabama, UCLA, and Baylor) won their first games against their respective opponents, but none could do it a second time. Thus, all the teams that entered the final day 2-0 ended up winning their respective regionals.

Two of the regionals had extremely tense finishes. After UCLA had defeated Alabama-Birmingham by a 4-1 score earlier in the day, UAB scored a dramatic win in the rematch, besting the Bruins 3-2 in 13 innings to advance. Florida State had the day's best comeback. FSU fell to South Alabama 3-0 in the teams' opener today. Then, in the rematch, the Seminoles rallied from a 6-1 deficit going into their half (the top) of the seventh, with five runs to tie the game. FSU then won in eight innings, 7-6.

All told, the tournament has gone according to form so far, with 11 of the top 12 seeds moving on, and 13 of the 16 seeds overall.

Region	2-0	2-1	Eliminated	Eliminated
Norman OK	Oklahoma (1)	Arkansas	Marist	Fordham
Gainesville FL	Florida (2)	S. Florida	Hampton	Ga Southern
Eugene OR	Oregon (3)	Wisconsin	N. Carolina	BYU
Austin TX	Texas (4)	S. Carolina	Army	Houston
Tempe AZ	Arizona St. (5)	Georgia	San Diego St.	San Jose St.
Columbia MO	Missouri (6)	Hofstra*	Stony Brook	Oregon St.
Knoxville TN	Tennessee (7)	NC State	JMU	Longwood
Ann Arbor MI	Michigan (8)	Cal	CMU	Valpo
Baton Rouge LA	LA-Lafayette	LSU (9)	NW State	C. Conn.
Tuscaloosa AL	Alabama (10)	W. Kentucky	J'ville St.	SC Upstate
Seattle WA	Washington (11)	Hawai'i	Minnesota	Portland St.
Lexington KY	Kentucky (12)	Va Tech*	Notre Dame	Marshall
Mobile AL	Florida St.	S. Ala (13)*	Miss. Valley	Miss. St.
Lincoln NE	Nebraska (14)	Stanford	Tulsa	N. Iowa
Louisville KY	UAB	UCLA*	IPFW	Lou'ville (15)
Coll. Station TX	Tex A&M (16)	Baylor*	Penn	Arizona

HTML Tables

Oregon region italicized, as it is one day ahead of the other regions.
Winners of each region are highlighted in bold.
*2-1 team has won the first game against the 2-0 team on Sunday, setting up a decisive rematch.

NCAA's Scoreboard Page to Follow Regionals

The NCAA website has a softball scoreboard page to follow the regionals. The bulk of the action gets underway today. The only exception is the Oregon regional, which began yesterday with the host Ducks beating BYU and North Carolina edging Wisconsin. All regionals are double-elimination.

ESPN.com Previews Four Regionals

ESPN.com's Graham Hays provides in-depth previews of four regionals, those hosted by Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Michigan, and LSU. Television listings are given for those games that will be broadcast (ESPN3 refers to Internet broadcasts available at this site; it only works if your Internet provider is contracted with ESPN).

2013 Geospatial NCAA Tournament Map

My annual maps of the NCAA regional groupings are shown below, based on the official tournament bracket. In all cases, the four teams sharing the same color and style (based on the host team's school colors) are in the same regional; the seeded team (with number in parentheses) will host. To increase readability, I've done something new this year. I've created two maps, shown below. You may click on the maps to enlarge them.

The top map shows relatively compact regionals, in which three or four of the teams in a given set are geographically close to each other. As an example of four nearby schools, Tennessee, North Carolina State, James Madison, and Longwood (the latter two from Virginia) are all shown in light orange, with light-blue outline and white letters. As an example of three nearby schools with a distant fourth school, LSU, Louisiana-Lafayette, and Northwestern State are all from the state of Louisiana, with Central Connecticut State joining in (all four schools shown in purple, with yellow letters).

The bottom map shows the more "far-flung" regionals. For example, as shown with black rectangles and yellow letters, the Missouri regional brings in Oregon State and two teams from Long Island, New York, Stony Brook and Hofstra. The Oregon regional (green rectangles with yellow letters) brings in BYU from nearby Utah, but also Wisconsin and North Carolina. Note the distinction between two regions with white rectangles: the Oklahoma region (with maroon outline and letters) and the Nebraska region (with black outline and red letters).

I have a few brief thoughts on the substance of the seedings and regional assignments. Texas's No. 4 seed is a little higher than the Longhorns were ranked in recent national polls. Texas has not done much in the tournament in the post-Cat Osterman era, so I'm skeptical that the Horns will perform at a level commensurate with their seeding. As a Michigan alumnus, I'm happy that the Wolverines are a top-8 seed, meaning they would host a super-regional if they advance past the initial round. However, Cal is a very tough team to face in the opening weekend, with star pitcher Jolene Henderson starting to return to form after an injury.

LSU's Rachele Fico: Then and Now

ESPN.com's Graham Hays has an article today about senior LSU pitcher Rachele Fico and her relationship with her father, who has been fighting cancer for 10 years. I must admit that I follow team performance more than that of individual players, so I'm not up to date on a lot of names. Still, Fico's seemed familiar to me. As it turns out, I posted a brief item on her in 2009. At the time, she had pitched 22 perfect games in her high school career!

Texas Tech Ends Scoring Drought, But Still Loses Sunday Finale to Oklahoma

A quick follow-up to yesterday's posting:

Texas Tech scored today with one out in the bottom of the fourth inning, ending the Red Raiders' offensive scoreless streak at 32 innings. Tech's batters actually went wild for 7 runs on the day; the only problem is that Oklahoma scored 13 (box score and play-by-play sheet).

Oklahoma Continues to Roll, Texas Tech Still Can't Score

No. 1 Oklahoma is visiting Texas Tech this weekend, so I took in this afternoon's contest. The Red Raiders, who have made the NCAA tournament the past three years, are looking like they won't make it this year. The Sooners, on the other hand, continue to soar.

In today's 6-0 OU win, Michelle Gascoigne was in the circle for the Sooners, so Tech only had to deal with star pitcher Keilani Ricketts as a batter (in the designated-player role). Unfortunately for the Raiders, Ricketts (shown at right walking up to the plate) hit a pair of homers today!

In Friday night's series opener, Ricketts pitched a six-inning (run-ruled) no-hitter over Tech, as the final was 9-0 OU.

Immediately prior to the Oklahoma series, the Raiders had also been no-hit last Sunday (for seven innings) in a 4-0 loss to Kansas. Tech was also shut-out by the Jayhawks 3-0 (seven innings) in the Saturday game of the KU series; the Raiders got four hits in this game, the last with two outs in the fourth, as the final 10 Raiders were retired. In the Friday game of the Kansas series, Tech lost 4-3, but went the final inning and two-thirds without scoring.

The good news for Texas Tech today, if one can call it that, is that the Raiders ended their hitless streak at 18 innings, as Katelyn Williams doubled with two outs in the second inning (bottom photo, on which you may click to enlarge).

However, Tech's streak of innings without scoring a run remains intact at 28 and 2/3. The Raiders should have scored in the fifth inning today, with a runner on third and a deep, potential sacrifice fly-out to left, but the runner appeared to misjudge the situation.