Skip to main content

2015 Geospatial Map of NCAA Tournament

My annual maps, visualizing the NCAA softball brackets geographically, are here. There are 16 seeded teams (with seed number in parentheses) in the 64-team field. The key thing to remember is that each set of four schools with the same color and design (based on the seeded team's school colors) are playing in the same regional. To minimize clutter, I have once again divided the regionals into those I consider relatively compact and those I consider scattered. Relatively compact means that all four teams in a regional are geographically close together, or three teams are close together and one distant team is being brought in. These regionals are shown in the following map, which you may click to enlarge.


The Auburn (No. 4 seed) regional, for example, includes teams only from the adjacent states of Alabama and Tennesee. The UCLA (No. 7 seed) regional contains three teams from southern California, plus the University of Texas.

The next map shows the scattered regionals, which to varying degrees bring together teams from different parts of the country.


The Alabama (No. 6 seed) region includes one other southern school, South Carolina-Upstate, but also brings in the University of Washington from the far northwestern U.S., and Fairfield (Connecticut) from the far northeast. Washington and Fairfield will really build up traveler miles for their programs!

The SEC is clearly the dominant conference with 11 teams selected in all, with seven seeded teams: 1 (Florida), 4 (Auburn), 5 (LSU), 6 (Alabama), 8 (Tennessee), 10 (Missouri), and 14 (Georgia). The other four participating SEC teams are Kentucky, Mississippi State, South Carolina, and Texas A&M. Vanderbilt does not field a softball squad, meaning that Ole Miss and Arkansas were the only excluded SEC teams. The Pac 12 (which only has nine softball schools) and ACC (which has 11) each had seven schools selected. This NCAA summary article lists all automatic-bid and at-large qualifiers, by conference, at the bottom of the report.

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