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...

Today marks the end of the regular season in three of the four power conferences -- the Big 10, Big 12, and SEC -- all of which will be holding postseason conference tournaments during the latter part of this coming week. The remaining conference, the Pac 10, does not hold a tournament, so next weekend will consist of "regular" conference play. The final standings are now known for the Big 10. Ohio State has once again defeated Penn State , this time by a 4-0 score, to edge out Northwestern for first place. The Big 10 awards its regular-season champion the right to host the conference tourney, so teams will be converging on Columbus in the next several days. Likewise, the Big 12's regular-season champion has been determined. As noted in this article from the Missouri website: In a game with Big 12 title implications, the Tiger softball team (37-21, 13-4) was unable to hold off Nebraska (37-20, 10-8), 3-1, and finished the regular season in third behind No. 7 Baylor (...

UPDATE: Due to heavy rain in Knoxville, there will be no game today between national No. 1 Alabama and No. 2 Tennessee. Initially, this afternoon's doubleheader was shifted to a single game tonight, but even that was unworkable, due to accumulated water on the field. The teams will try to play two tomorrow. See this announcement from the Tennessee athletics website for further detail. Meanwhile, the headline on the Ohio State athletics website proclaims " One Win Away ," as the Buckeye softballers have defeated Penn State in today's opener of the teams' two-game series and need to do so again tomorrow to claim the regular-season Big 10 title and, with it, the hosting honors for the conference tourney. LATER UPDATE: Baylor has defeated Texas A&M 5-4 in 10 innings, clinching at least a share of the Big 12 title for the Bears. According to this game article : The Lady Bears could win the conference championship outright with a Missouri loss to Nebraska o...

The SEC regular season closes on a high note this weekend, with the nation's No. 1-ranked team, Alabama, facing No. 2 Tennessee in a three-game series. The teams will play a doubleheader on Saturday afternoon and a single game on Sunday (the conference tournament then begins on Thursday, May 10). The official SEC softball page has a nice preview of the series, with all kinds of statistics and brief featured-player profiles. I've been skeptical of 'Bama this season, given what I consider a much less challenging schedule than that played by other top teams in the country (click here to see the Tide's schedule and results , and be sure to look at the column titled "Opp Rank" to see the ranking, if any, of each of their opponents). Quoting from the Tennessee article previewing the series: The series opener (Saturday at 1 p.m. ET) will be shown on ESPN2 while the finale (Sunday 1 p.m. ET) will be broadcast on ESPN with Eric Collins and U.S. National Team member...

Earlier tonight, in a game televised on CSTV, Baylor used a late offensive outburst to down Texas , 5-2. During the game, the television announcers told a story, of which I was unaware, on the history of Baylor softball. Enhancing the story is the role played by Texas assistant coach Corrie Hill , a Baylor player at the time. It seems that, as the 1988 season was coming to a close, Baylor had decided to drop softball, effective upon completion of the schedule. With one out to go in the team's last game, against Sam Houston State, the Baylor players, including the aforementioned Hill, walked off the field in protest of the sport's cancellation. Then, when Baylor was included in the upcoming merger of the old Southwest Conference and the Big 8, to form the Big 12 (which began competition in the 1996-97 academic year), the school decided to restore the roar of Bear softball. Apparently, not liking any loose ends in their lives, a number of players from 1988, again including ...

Tonight's scheduled game featuring Texas A&M at Baylor has been postponed until Saturday , due to rain.