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END-OF-THE-DAY UPDATE

Day 1 of the NCAA Women's College World Series ended a short time ago, with UCLA edging Pac-10 rival Arizona, 1-0. Both teams started off a little shaky in the field, resulting in numerous baserunners for whomever was batting at the time. The Bruins got a key first-inning hit by Amanda Kamekona to drive in the game's only run. After a few innings, both starting pitchers -- UCLA's Anjelica "Jelly" Selden and U of A's Taryne Mowatt -- settled down, and there were few offensive threats by either team the rest of the way.

In the first game of the evening session, it looked like Alabama's strategy of pitching around Arizona State slugger Kaitlin Cochran was going to work, as the Tide took a 1-0 lead into the Sun Devils' at-bats in the top of the seventh. Other ASU players started getting key hits, however, and the result was a 3-1 Sun Devil win.

The two afternoon games took place while I was at the office, so I only obtained periodic score updates on the computer and did not follow the games closely. In these contests, unseeded Louisiana-Lafayette upset No. 1-seed Florida, 3-2, and Texas A&M pushed across a run in the sixth to get by Virginia Tech, 1-0.

An ESPN.com article summarizing all of the Opening Day games is available here. Also, you can visit the team-specific webpages via the links on the right, to get more information on the games of your favorite school.

Two games will be played on Friday, both in the evening, featuring today's winning teams. Texas A&M will take on Louisiana-Lafayette, followed by another all-Pac 10 match-up, between Arizona State and UCLA.

EARLY REPORT

The NCAA Women's College World Series will be getting underway momentarily (at 12:00 Central), with top-seeded Florida taking on Louisiana-Lafayette. This game will be followed, in order, by Texas A&M-Virginia Tech, Alabama-Arizona State, and UCLA-Arizona. These games will be televised on ESPN. The official NCAA bracket is available here.

ESPN.com's Graham Hays has an excellent team-by-team rundown of the series participants. As always, you can find additional information by looking at the individual teams' official websites via the links on the right-hand side of the present page.

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