My thanks to Louisiana-Lafayette fan RM who just e-mailed me to let me know that there's a new official Ragin' Cajuns softball page. I have updated the links section on the right-hand side, accordingly. Concludes RM, "Should be a good year!"

It had to have been a major disappointment for University of Tennessee pitcher Monica Abbott to end her collegiate career this past spring, with her Volunteer squad falling just short of an NCAA Women's College World Series title. This past weekend, though, Abbott got some measure of championship success, pitching the Washington Glory to the National Pro Fastpitch league championship .

The US has won this year's KFC World Cup of Softball. As many of you may have seen on ESPN2 earlier this evening, Cat Osterman pitched Team USA to a 3-0 win over Japan in the championship game.

Team USA is taking on Canada in a Sunday afternoon match-up. Currently, it's 4-0 US, with the Americans batting in the top of the fifth. The University of Washington's Danielle Lawrie, whom many of you will remember from this past spring's Women's College World Series, has just come in to pitch for Canada. Update: The US coasted to a 7-0 victory over Canada . The Americans have now clinched a spot in Monday night's KFC World Cup championship game, probably against Japan. Only if Japan loses both of its Sunday night games -- to Venezuela and China -- will it not make the final.

The US team is now playing its evening game of the Saturday schedule, in which it leads Japan, 1-0, after an inning played. Monica Abbott is pitching for the Americans. I would say Team USA has a fairly deep pitching staff, you think? Update: Japan kept things relatively competitive, but the USA ultimately prevailed by a 4-1 score. Earlier today, the US routed the Dominican Republic , 9-0.

As most readers of this blog would probably be aware, there's some major softball going on, with the KFC World Cup taking place in Oklahoma City. Games involving the USA squad are being shown on ESPN and ESPN2. This article shows the schedule. Team USA opened up last night with a run-rule-shortened 9-1 win over Venezuela . As I write, the USA is playing its second game, leading 8-0 over China after three complete innings; another run-rule game thus seems likely. All three American pitchers that have gone so far are ones who ended their collegiate careers in 2006. Jennie Ritter (Michigan) and Alicia Hollowell (Arizona) threw last night, and Cat Osterman (Texas) is currently in the circle. Other players on the US roster include former Arizona outfielder Caitlin Lowe and former Tennessee pitcher Monica Abbott, who faced each other in this spring's Women's College World Series; Natasha Watley, one of the heroes of UCLA's 2003 NCAA championship; and Jennie Finch , the s...

I was just looking over the official website for the National Pro Fastpitch women's softball league. Given that softball has one of the latest-ending seasons within collegiate athletics and is inherently a spring/summer sport, this means that college seniors good enough to play at the pro level hardly get any break between NCAA and NPF action. Two players that we saw just about a month ago in the Women's College World Series, Northwestern's Eileen Canney (pitcher) and Garland Cooper (1B), are in fact teammates again, with NPF's New England Riptide. And, today, the twosome led the Riptide to victory in a game against Philadelphia. I plan to do some additional, periodic entries on the NPF over the summer, with a focus on prominent collegiate players of the last few years.

Happy Fourth of July to everyone! In recent softball news, the USA team took first place at the Junior World Championships (19 and under) in Enschede, The Netherlands. In line with this age limit, the American players appear to have been a mix largely of those who just completed their frosh year of college and those entering college this coming fall. Both through this USA Softball collection of player journals and the official USA roster at the tournament website, you can see who played for the Red, White, and Blue (the two lists are not identical). Some of the familiar names from this past college season would include K'Lee Arredondo (Arizona), Tiffany Huff (Tennessee), Maggie Viefhaus (Michigan), and Megan Langenfeld (UCLA). As noted in the article linked to Langenfeld's name, an additional four players from the USA team will be joining the Bruins for this upcoming season. Another member of the team was Brittany Lastrapes , an incoming player for the University of A...

At Texas Tech University, where I'm on the faculty, the softball team is starting to show some signs of emerging from the doldrums. As many of you will recall, the Red Raiders got hot toward the end of the season and made the championship game of the Big 12 tournament, upsetting eventual College World Series participants Baylor and Texas A&M along the way. Whether Tech can break through next year and contend for an NCAA tournament berth based on its regular-season record, remains to be seen. The last time Texas Tech made the NCAA tournament field was in 2001 . The Red Raiders were powered that year by a pitcher named Amanda Renfro, whose career accomplishments included two perfect games and a no-hitter, plus top 10 status in the NCAA record book in a couple of categories. The official Texas Tech athletics website has been tracking down alumni athletes in a variety of sports to do stories on them, and one of the featured athletes is Renfro, now known as Amanda Renfro Simmons ...

It's now time to look toward next season. To let you know at a glance which key players from the top teams were seniors this past season and thus not returning, and who are some key players who are returning, I present a list below of the top teams' senior losses and top returnees. Further information on who the top players from this past season were can be found by looking at the first-, second-, and third-team NFCA/Louisville Slugger All-America honorees . And don't forget the team-specific home pages in the links section to the right. Note also that with 2008 being a Summer Olympics year, some of the players listed below as returning may redshirt to concentrate on the Olympics (there's a discussion thread at Ultimate College Softball entitled, " Looking at Next Year ," which lists some players who may fall into this category). With these cautions in mind, here we go... WORLD SERIES TEAMS Arizona Seniors: Kristie Fox (SS), Caitlin Lowe (CF), Chelsie M...

Well, that was certainly an intense final series between Arizona and Tennessee! I'm taking a few days off from blogging. Check back next week, though, for my end-of-season synopsis of the top schools' senior losses from this year's teams and what to expect next year...

ORANGE CRUSHED -- Arizona Wins National Title Congratulations to the Wildcats! Last chance for Tennessee... Schutzler strikes out... Callahan likewise... Huff walks... Doepking grounds out to third... Dare I say it, the Vols have runners on first and second with no outs in the sixth... After a fly out to left, a wild pitch (or passed ball) puts both runners in scoring position for Posey... An infield hit to third loads the bases for Tennessee's most clutch hitter, Chiles... A liner down the left-filed stripe just goes foul by about 2 feet! Chiles bloops one up behind third base (probably going foul), nice catch by Fox for the second out... Danielle Pieroni to pinch hit (what a spot for a newcomer)... hanging in there with a 3-2 count... strikes out swinging, ending the inning and extending Mowatt's scoreless-inning streak to 16 (during the at-bat, the announcers had quoted the figure at 15 2/3)... Tennessee now has six offensive outs to score at least five...

Wednesday night, for all the marbles! Tennessee's last chance, as the Vols come up in the bottom of the tenth... Doepking strikes out... Alexia Clay comes up... and U of A throws away an apparently easy throw to first base on a routine grounder... One out, runner on first, pinch-hitter Anita Manuma steps to the plate... and strikes out... The Vols are down to their last out! Horiuchi up... grounds into a force at second. Game over! 1-0. U of A's Sam Banister slides a line single to left... Bunted to second, one out... Callista Balko up (0-19 in the World Series) also bunts, and the first-baseperson drops the throw to her... Hard to tell, but she probably would have been out, in my view... First and third, one out, for Adrienne Acton... Danielle Rodriguez, inserted as a pinch-runner for Banister, scores from third on an infield grounder -- a very close play at the plate. The key is whether Rodriguez got her hand on the back of the plate, and the ump said ...

Arizona's down to its last strike, but forestalls defeat with a bloop single... It's 0-2 on the next hitter, so again, the Wildcats are down to their final strike; this time it's an easy fly-out to center. Vols win 3-0. Monica Abbott puts up "only" eight strikeouts. Tennessee will try to close it out tomorrow night. Tennessee's staging a late rally to get some insurance runs. In the top of the seventh, with two outs and the bases loaded... (cue the Hollywood suspense music)... India Chiles comes up as a pinch-hitter and, sure enough, hits a bloop single up the middle. It's now 3-0 Vols... Shannon Doepking just pulverizes a drive to left, 2-0 Tennessee with one out, top of the fourth... Surprise, surprise. Tennessee frosh Alexia Clay, quiet for much of the World Series, homers with two out in the top of the second to make it 1-0 Vols (the first inning was quite uneventful)... One important development at gametime is that Tennessee's India...

Washington vs. Arizona (Game 2) Arizona comes out blazing in the top of the first, with Jenae Leles doubling in Caitlin Lowe and Chelsie Mesa. U-Dub comes up trailing 2-0... U of A adds a run in the top of the third, making it 3-0... With two out in the bottom of the fourth, and no hits to its credit, Washington comes to life with singles by Dominique Lastrapes, Dena Tyson, and Lauren Greer. It's now 3-1... Arizona gets the run back; 4-1 going into the bottom of the fifth... It's getting out of hand: 8-1 'Zona, still batting in the top of the sixth... It's official: Arizona vs. Tennessee, two-out-of-three for the NCAA championship, starting Monday night. Northwestern vs. Tennessee (Game 1) Tennessee's bionic India Chiles, playing with a recent ACL tear as well as a shoulder injury, has gotten yet another hit, in the bottom of the first, and has stolen second! The Vols, with the bases loaded and no outs, avert a disastrous double play and score the game's...

Preview of Sunday's Play Arizona (one loss) vs. Washington (no losses) -- These two Pac 10 foes will battle it out on Sunday for one of the spots in the championship round (which begins Monday night). U of A and U-Dub start off Sunday's action at noon Central. Given the double-elimination format, a Huskies' win in either a Game 1 or (potential) Game 2 against Arizona will put Washington in the championship round. Defending NCAA champion Arizona must sweep two, to return to the final round. Northwestern (one loss) vs. Tennessee (no losses) -- Tennessee is in an analogous situation to Washington, with just one win over Northwestern needed for the Vols to advance to the final round. For Northwestern to return to the championship round, it must sweep two from Tennessee. Once the championship round begins, all records are swept clean and the two finalists begin a new two-out-of-three series. Saturday Summaries Baylor vs. Northwestern Northwestern scores two in the top ...

Arizona vs. Tennessee This game is still scheduled to take place tonight, in spite of the late hour (11:00 Central)... The idea of the Vols' Monica Abbott getting a repeat no-hitter was quickly put to rest, as the Wildcats' Caitlin Lowe led off the game by beating out a grounder back to Abbott. However, Lowe was called out for leaving first base early on a steal attempt. A freeze-frame on the instant replay clearly showed Lowe to have left the bag while the ball was still in Abbott's hand. Two strikeouts follow to end the top of the first. Tennessee's now coming up to bat... Update 1: Abbott gets two key strikeouts in the top of the third to put out a fire and keep the score at 0-0. Arizona got a one-out single with a runner on second, but she had to stop at third. After a strikeout, the Vols intentionally walked Kristie Fox, U of A's hero of yesterday, to load the bases. Abbott then struck out the next batter... Update 2: Tennessee got its first hit of...

The Nightcap Arizona has just put across a run in the bottom of the fourth against Baylor, for the game's only score thus far. Each team has at least one hit, so we won't have another no-hitter today. Update 1: Baylor has tied it in the top of the fifth, with a runner who was on second advancing one base each time on back-to-back Arizona passed balls (Wildcat pitcher Taryne Mowatt has indeed been wild, even though the miscues have been charged to the catcher). On the second passed ball, it looked like the Bear batter might actually have tipped the ball foul, but replays seemed to suggest (to me at least) that the bat never contacted the ball. A great catch by U of A shortstop Kristie Fox prevented Baylor from taking the lead. Update 2: We've had a lot of noteworthy developments today and now we're getting another one: Extra innings. Update 3: Kristie Fox, who earlier made a big defensive play, ends the game in the bottom of the ninth with a home run. Final sc...

In anticipation of tomorrow's opening of the Women's College World Series (see link to timetable in yesterday's posting, below), I thought it would be interesting to see how the eight participating teams did head-to-head against each other during the year. To this end, I have created the following network diagram. Three findings jump out at me: *Nearly all the teams have some experience playing against other teams that ultimately made the WCWS. To some extent, this is a result of teams' being in the same conferences. However, a good number of these games were nonconference affairs, usually in tournaments. *Baylor is the only team to have a winning record against every fellow World Series team it faced. *Tennessee is the only team not to have faced any other World Series teams. Perhaps the Volunteers' philosophy was that they'd get enough tough competition in SEC play, but no other SEC teams have made it to Oklahoma City.

The bracket/timetable diagram for the NCAA Women's College World Series is now available at the official NCAA softball site. Action gets underway Thursday at noon Central time, with Washington taking on DePaul. Using the original national seedings, the first-round pairings follow the format of 1 (Arizona) vs. 8 (Baylor), 2 (Northwestern) vs. 7 (Arizona State), etc. Washington is the No. 6 seed and DePaul, coming out of the No. 14 position to upset No. 3 Oklahoma, essentially takes over Oklahoma's seed. The one remaining match-up is No. 4 Texas A&M vs. No. 5 Tennessee. The team homepages for the eight participating squads are bolded in the links section in the right-hand column.

Conclusion from Tucson, Arizona Defending NCAA champion Arizona is going back to the World Series, having dispatched Cal State Fullerton 2-1 in a game that just ended. As the ESPN commentators have readily pointed out, this year's World Series will be the first in the 26 years of NCAA sponsorship of the event that no California school will be present. Plenty of California-based players will be participating, but not any universities from the Golden State. Conclusion from Norman, Oklahoma DePaul has closed out Oklahoma, 7-2, to become the seventh team to qualify for the Women's College World Series. That gives the Chicago area two teams in the World Series: DePaul and Northwestern. Mid-Afternoon DePaul looks to be in strong position to get to the Women's College World Series, leading Oklahoma 5-2 in the top of the fifth (with OU as visitors) in today's game, and having taken yesterday's opener. Should the 14th-seeded Blue Demons indeed oust the third-seeded Soo...

Here's a direct link to the official NCAA Saturday scoreboard. Final posting of the evening! And then there were six... Arizona State defeated LSU, 7-4, to sweep the teams' super-regional series and advance to the Women's College World Series. I guess Purple Power has its limitations! Down the road, Arizona pulled away from Cal State Fullerton to defeat the Titans 11-6 in the opener of the teams' series. 8:55 pm Central Another three-run homer, this time by Laine Roth, has put Arizona in the lead, 6-5, over Cal State Fullerton. The Titan third-baseperson's inability to field cleanly a two-out grounder left the door open for the Wildcats, and they certainly took advantage. 8:20 pm Central Callista Balko has just hit a three-run homer to bring Arizona within 5-3 of Cal State Fullerton. We have two more teams that have qualified for the Women's College World Series: Tennessee bounced back from its Game 2 loss to Hawaii earlier today to knock off the Rainbow Wa...

Evening As I write, five of the six Friday games in the super-regionals have ended, with only the LSU at Arizona State contest still going (click here for the NCAA softball page's Friday scoreboard). Thus far, all of the home/higher-seeded teams have won, in three cases in blowout fashion. Tennessee's rout of Hawaii and Baylor's of Michigan were each 9-0 five-inning run-rule jobs. Also, Northwestern stopped South Carolina, 6-1. Two other games were much more competitive, with Washington edging Alabama 4-3 and Texas A&M outlasting Florida, 2-0. In the Aggie-Gator battle, televised on ESPN, Florida loaded the bases with one out in the top of the sixth, but a ground-ball force-out at home and a strikeout put the kaibosh on Florida's rally. Late Afternoon In anticipation of the start of the super-regionals tonight, I have bolded the team-page links for the 16 participating schools in the links section on the right. The remaining, non-bolded teams are ones that have...

Some news and notes heading into the super-regionals, which begin tomorrow. Eight series, each using a two-out-of-three format, will be played, with the eight winners advancing to the NCAA Women's College World Series. Television coverage of the "supers" will be as follows: Michigan at Baylor will be on College Sports Television (CSTV), according to this schedule . Four other series (Florida vs. Texas A&M; Hawaii vs. Tennessee; DePaul vs. Oklahoma; and Cal State Fullerton vs. Arizona) will be shown on the "ESPN Family of Networks" (ESPN and ESPN-U, in this instance). Broadcast times for these series can be found in this discussion thread from Ultimate College Softball (the sequence of messages contains updates as they were becoming available; the most informative message to look at is one by Matt Simon, with the timestamp "5/22/07 at 10:21 AM"). That leaves three series (Arizona State vs. LSU; Northwestern vs. South Carolina; and Washington vs....

Here are the photos I took at the Columbus, Ohio regional, as I alluded to in a recent posting (you can click on the photos to enlarge them). Above, Cal State Fullerton's players (who ultimately won the regional) and Virginia Tech's engage in the traditional team handshakes, upon the Hokies' elimination in the Saturday late game. The first of Saturday's three games pitted the host Ohio State Buckeyes against Virginia Tech. Here, the Buckeyes' Lauren Daykin bats, while Liz Caputo awaits her turn. With Ohio State seemingly cruising along with a 2-0 lead over the Hokies, things got a little tighter in the top of the sixth. Buckeye ace Jamee Juarez came on in relief and, despite some threats by Va Tech, OSU won 2-1, with Juarez getting the save. A key play occurred, in fact, with the first batter Juarez faced, Hokie catcher Kelsey Hoffman. With runners on first and second, Hoffman hit a fly to right that was tailing off toward the foul line. Whether the ball landed ...

The NCAA regionals are now over and the match-ups for next weekend's super-regionals known. Each "super" consists of two teams that will play a two-out-of-three series, the winners of which will comprise the eight-team field for the Women's College World Series. This Sunday scoreboard page from the NCAA has links to articles (recaps) of today's decisive games. ESPN.com has a nice chart of the super-regionals , from which I've adapted the following list of pairings. As can be seen, the nationally seeded teams assigned to each of the four-team regionals (one per region) had a high success rate. To my knowledge, the higher seed in each super-regional pair will host the series. Below the super-regional match-ups, I comment on several of this past weekend's regionals. Arizona (national No. 1 seed) vs. Cal State Fullerton (winner of Columbus, Ohio region, at which No. 16 Virginia Tech was the nationally seeded team) Baylor (8) vs. Michigan (9) Tennesse...

Some of the results from Friday's play that got my attention are as follows ( Friday NCAA scoreboard )... Tennessee Tech's 4-2 stunner over Alabama. Louisville's 8-0, five-inning run-rule shellacking of Oregon State, who was a participant in last year's Women's College World Series. Texas A&M's 9-5 victory over Sam Houston State. The Aggies fell behind 5-0 after the first half-inning, but outscored Sam Houston State 9-0 the rest of the way. Homestanding South Carolina recording what may (or may not) be considered an upset of national 15th seed North Carolina State, 5-2.

With the NCAA tournament starting Thursday with regionals hosted by BYU and Stanford, and the remaining regionals starting on Friday, I thought I'd provide links to the 16 regional sites. Each four-team regional features one nationally seeded team, listed in parentheses. Arizona regional (Arizona, 1) Northwestern regional (Northwestern, 2) UMass regional (Oklahoma, 3) Texas A&M regional (Texas A&M, 4) Tennessee regional (Tennessee, 5) Nebraska regional (Washington, 6) BYU regional (Arizona State, 7) Hofstra regional (Baylor, 8) Michigan regional (Michigan, 9) Stanford regional (LSU, 10) Alabama regional (Alabama, 11) UCLA regional (UCLA, 12) Florida regional (Florida, 13) Southern Illinois regional (DePaul, 14) South Carolina regional (NC State, 15) Ohio State regional (Virginia Tech, 16)

The 64-team NCAA championship softball field has just been announced on ESPNews. The top 16 teams nationally, in the selection committee's view, were seeded 1-16. Then, the teams were divided into 16 four-team regional sites, each site containing one of the nationally seeded teams. Usually, the nationally seeded team was assigned hosting duties, but not always. All but two of the regionals will play their games Friday-Sunday, the others going Thursday-Saturday. The winners from the 16 regions will then be paired off the next week for eight two-out-of-three super-regional series. For the supers, the winner of the national No. 1 seed's region (probably the No. 1 team, itself, but nothing is guaranteed) plays the winner of the No. 16's region, the regions with the 2 and 15 teams are matched, and so forth (3 and 14, 4 and 13, ...). Here are my initial reactions to the seedings, cross-posted on one of the Ultimate College Softball discussion boards while the teams were bein...

It's been an exciting day to close out conference-level softball play, both with some regular-season play and some tournaments. Next come the NCAA brackets, tomorrow! Let's start with the Big 12. At the risk of overdoing the Cinderella imagery, for Texas Tech, the yellow softball finally turned into an orange pumpkin against Oklahoma in the tourney final . The Red Raiders, who finished eighth in the Big 12 regular-season standings at 4-12, upset Texas A&M in the semi-finals, the second Tech upset over a national top 10 team in two days. In the title game, the Sooners led 6-3 going into the top of the seventh inning, but Tech loaded the bases with one out, thus bringing the potential go-ahead run to the plate. It took two consecutive great catches by OU on Tech foul balls (one by the first-baseperson and one by the left-fielder) to finally close out the Red Raiders. In the Big 10, Ohio State followed up its regular-season conference championship with a conference tourne...

Late night I said in an earlier posting that, in discussing results from the conference tournaments, I would focus on upsets. How this for an upset? The nation's top-ranked team, Tennessee, has lost in the SEC semis to Florida, by a 1-0 score. According to the linked article: Senior pitcher Monica Abbott (41-3) allowed just two hits over seven innings of work with 13 strikeouts during the tough luck loss to UF. Unfortunately, the 6-3 left hander permitted a fourth-inning solo home run to Florida's Melissa Zick to mark the eventual game-winning score. We should not make too much of one game. However, the storyline of a tall left-hander, in the orange-trimmed uniform of a school with the initials UT, pitching well but not getting any run support may sound familiar. Any implied comparison to Cat Osterman during her years at the University of Texas is purely intentional. Florida faces LSU in tomorrow's SEC final. Ohio State routed Purdue to make it to tomorrow's Big 10...

Late night UCLA has handed Arizona a rare defeat in Tucson, by a score of 7-4. The Bruins' Megan Langenfeld not only was the winning pitcher; she also socked a three-run homer. Up the highway, ASU defeated Washington , 2-1. Late afternoon Today's action in the Big 12 tournament has been rained out , so play will begin tomorrow . No upsets yet, of which I'm aware, but Alabama and LSU each needed extra innings to win their respective opening games in the SEC tourney. Please visit the conference-tournament websites linked below for further details. Morning Today begins what will be several exciting weekends to determine, ultimately, this year's national champion of college softball. Immediately ahead of us are conference tournaments of the Big 10, Big 12, and SEC, which will determine the recipient of each of these conferences' automatic NCAA bids. All of the leading teams from these leagues will get in as at-large teams, anyway, if they don't win automatic b...

In football, teams sometimes have a "quarterback controversy." The softball equivalent would have to be a pitcher controversy . Unlike in baseball, where the strain of throwing overhand limits a starting pitcher to one appearance every five days or so, softball's underhand pitching motion is relatively untaxing physically, so that a team can use one pitcher exclusively in a regional or national tournament, if the coach desires. At my undergraduate alma mater, UCLA, the Bruins are facing some uncertainty over who should be the lead pitcher. Junior Anjelica (Jelly) Selden has been UCLA's pitcher in the previous two years' Women's College World Series. Despite a few memorable homers given up and a mental block about throwing the ball to first base on grounders hit to her, Selden's World Series showings have generally been strong. Selden has struggled at times this season, however, and combined with the emergence of frosh Megan Langenfeld , the UCLA pitc...