Oklahoma was just as dominant over Michigan last night as my sabermetric statistical preview of the Women's College World Series suggested the Sooners would be. That makes me happy as a statistician, but sad as a Michigan alum! Keilani Ricketts pitched just as advertised, no-hitting the Wolverines in a 7-1 OU win (and the first WCWS no-hitter in six years). The most you could say for UM is that it managed to avoid being run-ruled. As I wrote on Wednesday, "even though Florida is the No. 2 seed and Tennessee is No. 7, the Volunteers put up better numbers [during the season] than the Gators in all four [sabermetric] categories (although not necessarily by large margins)." As it turned out, the statistical information was a better predictor than the seeding, as the Volunteers won easily , 9-2. Texas vs. Arizona State looked to be the most evenly matched contest, both in terms of seeding (No. 4 and 5, respectively) and the teams' sabermetric profiles. However, exc...

As many readers are probably aware, the term "sabermetrics" refers to advanced statistical analysis of baseball, deriving from the initials of the Society for American Baseball Research ( SABR ). Statistical analyses of other sports such as basketball and football, now becoming more commonplace, are sometimes also referred to as being sabermetric in nature. Why the need for sabermetrics? It is easy to identify the shortcomings of traditional statistics in baseball and softball. Take batting average, for example, which is a player's number of hits divided by his or her number of official at-bats. One problem is that batting average does not credit players for getting on base through avenues other than hits, such as walks. My favorite scene in the movie Moneyball is when the character of Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane, in a conference room filled with old-school scouts, asks, "Do I care if a player gets to first base by a single or by a walk?" (par...

ESPN.com's Graham Hays looks at all eight teams in the upcoming Women's College World Series.

Florida has qualified for the Women's College World Series with its second straight one-run victory over Alabama-Birmingham (1-0 today, 4-3 yesterday).  You can scroll down to Thursday's entry on this blog to see my game-by-game super-regional chart. Nebraska pitcher Tatum Edwards has homered in the bottom of the first to give her team a 1-0 lead over Oregon. Twin sister Taylor Edwards is the catcher for the Huskers, who lead the series 1-0... Oregon has tied the game 1-1 in the top of the second and has a threat going. However, Nebraska gets out of the inning with no more damage... Huskers string together two singles, Duck errors, to go up 3-1. UO now up in top of the fifth... Ducks close to within 3-2, as of top of sixth... Nebraska three outs away from Oklahoma City as Oregon comes up in top of seventh trailing 3-2... Duck lead-off hitter tries surprise bunt, Husker catcher "air-mails" throw to right-field wall. Unclear if a good throw would have gotten runner a...

Seven of the eight super-regional series are active today, all except the Washington-Missouri series that was captured by the Huskies last night. I will update this write-up throughout the day. To see game-by-game results at a glance, scroll down to Thursday's entry for my super-regional chart. Oklahoma is the second team to make the Women's College World Series , defeating Texas A&M in run-rule fashion for the second straight day (10-2 yesterday, 8-0 today). In other Saturday action... Louisiana-Lafayette leads Michigan 3-0 in Game 2 of their series, as the Wolverines bat in the top of the sixth. Should the Ragin' Cajuns hold on, the series would go to a decisive Game 3 later today. ULL shortstop Nerissa Myers has just made a spectacular over-the-shoulder catch of a ball hit between short and left-field, preventing a Michigan hit... ULL finishes off Michigan 5-0. On to a deciding game... ...And in that deciding game, ULL and Michigan are scoreless after two com...

FRIDAY EVENING UPDATE: Washington is the first team to earn a spot in this year's Women's College World Series, with a 1-0 victory over Missouri in Game 2 of the teams' super-regional.... Oklahoma (over Texas A&M) and Tennessee (over Alabama) have assumed 1-0 leads in their respective series... Florida State-Texas is the second series to be postponed a day due to rain. FRIDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE: Wild one in Ann Arbor! Michigan was on the verge of closing out Game 1 vs. Louisiana-Lafayette, leading 2-0 in the top of the seventh with two outs for the Ragin' Cajuns. However, a single and home run send game to extra innings... ULL takes 3-2 lead in top of the eighth on another homer... Cajuns threaten to pad lead, but don't... Michigan gets lead-off batter on base in bottom of eighth via hit-by-pitch... ULL drops foul pop, giving batter another chance...  Runner to second on passed ball... Wolverines win on two-run homer. *** Washington beat Missouri , 2-1,...

The NCAA super-regionals begin tonight. At the bottom of this write-up is a chart of the match-ups, on which I will list the winners of each game. The SEC is guaranteed a team in the Women's College World Series (the winner of the Alabama vs. Tennessee super-regional), but it is also guaranteed that one of these perennial powers will not be in the WCWS. In fact, the SEC potentially could send five teams to the World Series (the Bama-Tennessee winner, plus Texas A&M, Florida, Kentucky, and Missouri), although some pretty dramatic upsets would have to occur for all these teams to advance. This year is the first time since the introduction of the super-regional format in 2005 that neither UCLA nor Arizona has made it to this round. The Pac 12 still has a major presence with Oregon, Arizona State, and Washington still alive. The Big 12 appears positioned to send two to the WCWS, with No. 1 seed Oklahoma facing former conference foe Texas A&M and No. 4 Texas hosting unse...

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 Br...

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'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).

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...

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!