Skip to main content
Starting at the top of the national rankings, Arizona State scored a 5-2 victory over UCLA this afternoon, putting the Sun Devils (16-2) one game ahead of the Bruins (15-3) in the Pac 10 standings. The folks on the Left Coast don't play a conference tournament, so next weekend will feature three more games of league play for each team.

In the other major conferences covered on this blog, the regular season is now over and tournament action will be getting underway. Here is a roundup:

BIG 10

Michigan and Northwestern each won out this weekend, leaving the two teams tied. According to this Northwestern press release:

NU tied Michigan atop the conference standings this year with an 18-2 record, and after all tiebreakers between the two came out equal, the Wildcats won the official coin toss conducted by the Big Ten Conference office to determine the host of the postseason tournament.

The tournament runs this upcoming Thursday-Saturday, with the bracket available via the Northwestern softball page.

BIG 12

Texas A&M wrapped up the regular-season title a few days ago. The Aggies will thus headline the conference tournament field in Oklahoma City competing Friday-Sunday.

(Following up on an item from yesterday, Texas Tech failed to reach .500 in league play, losing today to Oklahoma State, but nevertheless enters the tournament with a respectable No. 6 seed.)

SEC

A nice overview page for the SEC's conference tourney (coming up Thursday-Saturday) is available here. Although the SEC softball page reports the standings separately for teams in the conference's Eastern and Western Divisions, the team with the best record in league play is nevertheless considered the SEC's overall regular-season champion (with the conference tourney seeded accordingly). Here is a synopsis from the SEC site:

The [Florida] Gators [No. 2 in one of the national polls] clinched the conference title by sweeping the No. 12 Tennessee Lady Vols in the final series of the regular season and posted a 27-1 record. Nationally top-ranked Alabama [in one of the polls] was upset by Georgia and finished second in the league with a 25-3 record.

I encourage everyone to check out the conference and team webpages in the links section on the right, to find out when your favorite teams are playing and learn about the available television coverage of the conference tournaments.

Popular posts from this blog

Pitching Star NiJaree Canady Reportedly in the Transfer Portal

Stanford pitching ace NiJaree Canady has reportedly entered the transfer portal ( link ), having completed two seasons in the circle for the Cardinal. Stanford has made the WCWS in both of Canady's seasons on the team. Another school hit hard by the transfer portal is the University of Washington, with an exodus of eight Huskies . This list of the top ten players in the portal includes four from UW. Today is the final day of the 30-day window for players to enter the portal.
Read more

NiJaree Canady Transferring to -- of All Places -- Texas Tech

NiJaree Canady, whose sub-1.00 ERA helped lead Stanford to the Women's College World Series in both her years with the Cardinal, announced on July 24 that she is transferring to Texas Tech. I've lived in Lubbock for 27 years and can say that the town has been improving with a greater selection of restaurants and shops, and a new downtown performing arts center. Likewise, nice new facilities have been dotting the Texas Tech campus . Still, it seems unlikely that Canady would have become a Red Raider without the $1 million annual Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deal for her, made possible by the donation of a Texas Tech alumni couple. So stunning an event is this, even in the ever-changing world of collegiate athletics, that the New York Times  even ran a behind-the-scenes story on Canady's path to Texas Tech. I look forward to being in the stands to watch Canady pitch next spring, an opportunity I never expected to have.
Read more

2024 WCWS -- Day 6

Oklahoma has kept its quest for a fourth straight WCWS title alive with a 6-5 eight-inning win over Florida to advance to the championship round. The Sooners will take on Texas in a two-out-of-three series beginning Wednesday night. Florida held a 5-2 lead after three innings and looked well on its way to beating OU for the second straight day, which would have eliminated the Sooners and taken the Gators to the final round. However, UF scored no further runs, whereas Oklahoma chipped away with two in the fourth, one in the sixth, and one in the eighth. The final run came via Jayda Coleman's opposite-field walk-off home run to lead off the bottom of the eighth.  Sooner starter Kelly Maxwell went the distance, allowing only four hits. Three of those hits were home runs within the first three innings; the only other Gator hit was an infield single in the top of the sixth. Maxwell also walked five and struck out eight. Florida starter Keagan Rothrock also went the distance, allowing 1...
Read more