Skip to main content

Double Dose of Nutter Classic This Year

This year's Mary Nutter Classic in Cathedral City, California (near Palm Springs) has a new feature this year -- two weekends of play -- encompassing 44 schools. A chart of participating teams is available here.

The first weekend, running tomorrow through Sunday (February 19-21), features 19 teams. The leading squads (with their rankings in the latest ESPN.com/USA Softball and USA Today/NCFA polls) are as follows: No. 4/4 LSU, No. 7/8 UCLA, No. 9/11 Washington, No. 10 (tie)/9 Arizona, and No. 16/15 Central Florida.

The second weekend (Feb. 25-28), 29 teams will take the field. (Adding 19 and 29 suggests that 48 teams are participating, but four schools -- UCLA, Washington, Bethune Cookman, and Loyola Marymount -- are playing both weekends.)

Teams playing only during the second weekend include No. 1/1 Florida, No. 2/2 Michigan, No. 5/6 Oregon, No. 10 (tie)/14 Oklahoma, No. 12/10 Georgia, and No. 13/16 Missouri.

Popular posts from this blog

This Friday (and all remaining Fridays of the regular season), I will preview the upcoming weekend's games. Before doing so, I wanted to do an entry, primarily for sports fans who have not watched much softball, on differences they could expect to see between softball and baseball. The Sandy Plains Softball Association of Marietta, Georgia has produced a document entitled Fastpitch 101 , which details the similarities and differences in the rules of the two sports. Here are some of my own observations from over the years: 1. Because the bases are considerably closer together in softball (60 feet) than in baseball (90 feet), softball infielders consistently must pick up ground balls and make their throws to first base quickly, in order to get the runner. In other words, many (if not most) softball grounders result in "bang-bang" plays at first base, necessitating a lot of close calls by first-base umpires, who must detect whether the thrown ball (to the first-baseperso...
Read more

Florida Shines at Kajikawa Classic

The University of Florida, ranked No. 14 and 15 in the two major national preseason polls, pulled two major upsets en route to an undefeated 5-0 performance at the season-opening Kajikawa Classic at Arizona State. Among the Gator victims were three Pac 12 schools: No. 3 Cal (by a score of 7-4), No. 5/6 Oregon (1-0), and No. 13/14 Arizona (14-3). Full results of the tournament are available here .
Read more
Washington used a first-inning grand-slam homer from pitcher Danielle Lawrie and some late insurance runs to defeat Georgia by a score of 9-3 in tonight's late game. The win gives U-Dub a spot in the best-of-three championship series against Florida starting Monday (Georgia had defeated Washington earlier today, 9-8 in nine innings, to force tonight's rematch). The Huskies thus claimed "top dog" status over Georgia on their side of the bracket. Florida got a two-out grand-slam homer from Ali Gardiner in the bottom of the seventh to edge Alabama 6-5. The Crimson Tide made a strong recovery in the tournament after looking "not ready for prime time" in an opening-round loss to Michigan. But, as a result of tonight's heartbreaking loss to the Gators, Bama is now eliminated. Lowrie's and Gardiner's grand-slams are among four that have been hit so far in this World Series.
Read more