Today, barring any weather-related issues, the super-regional tracking board will be completed and we'll have our field for the Women's College World Series. There are four decisive Game 3's today. Comments on the games are shown below the table. Teams Game 1 Game 2 Game 3 Alabama (16) at Florida (1)* Alabama Florida Florida Baylor (15) at Arizona (2)** Arizona Baylor Baylor Kentucky (14) at Oregon (3)** Oregon Oregon --- LSU (13) at Florida State (4)** FSU LSU LSU Mississippi (12) at UCLA (5)* UCLA UCLA --- Utah (11) at Washington (6)** Washington Utah Washington Oklahoma (10) at Auburn (7)** Oklahoma Oklahoma --- Texas A&M (9) at Tennessee (8)** Tennessee A&M A&M HTML Tables *Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (if necessary) **Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (if necessary).  LSU has come back from an opening-game loss on Friday to win its super-regional, with a 6-4 decision today over Florida State. LSU's win ensures that the SEC will have three...

Here is the super-regional tracking board (with links in the results area) and comments on the games below... Teams Game 1 Game 2 Game 3 Alabama (16) at Florida (1)* Alabama Florida Florida Baylor (15) at Arizona (2)** Arizona Baylor Kentucky (14) at Oregon (3)** Oregon Oregon --- LSU (13) at Florida State (4)** FSU LSU Mississippi (12) at UCLA (5)* UCLA UCLA --- Utah (11) at Washington (6)** Washington Utah Oklahoma (10) at Auburn (7)** Oklahoma Oklahoma --- Texas A&M (9) at Tennessee (8)** Tennessee A&M HTML Tables *Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (if necessary) **Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (if necessary).  Oklahoma closes out Auburn, 5-2, to get back to Women's College World Series... Nicole Pendley's three-run homer begins the scoring and Sooners never look back... LSU, batting in bottom of third vs. Florida State, scores game's first run . Tigers may well get more, with runners on the corners and none out... Bases loaded... FSU's Megha...

Here is the super-regional tracking board (with links in the results area) and comments on the games below... Teams Game 1 Game 2 Game 3 Alabama (16) at Florida (1)* Alabama Florida Baylor (15) at Arizona (2)** Arizona Kentucky (14) at Oregon (3)** Oregon LSU (13) at Florida State (4)** FSU Mississippi (12) at UCLA (5)* UCLA UCLA --- Utah (11) at Washington (6)** Washington Oklahoma (10) at Auburn (7)** Oklahoma Texas A&M (9) at Tennessee (8)** Tennessee HTML Tables *Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (if necessary) **Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (if necessary).  Oklahoma at Auburn underway. Sooners leave bases loaded in top of first, without scoring... Auburn does the same in the bottom of the second... Oklahoma is leading 2-0, top 6, and has the bases loaded with two out... Pop to 2B ends threat... Final score is 4-0 Sooners... Florida State leads LSU 1-0, bottom 4... After Tigers tie the game in the top of the fifth on this slide , Noles put two across in bot...

Here is the super-regional tracking board (with links in the results area) and comments on the games below... Teams Game 1 Game 2 Game 3 Alabama (16) at Florida (1)* Alabama Baylor (15) at Arizona (2)** Kentucky (14) at Oregon (3)** LSU (13) at Florida State (4)** Mississippi (12) at UCLA (5)* UCLA Utah (11) at Washington (6)** Oklahoma (10) at Auburn (7)** Texas A&M (9) at Tennessee (8)** HTML Tables *Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (if necessary) **Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (if necessary).  Alabama has upset No. 1-seeded Florida, 3-0, in the opener of the teams' super-regional series. According to the Tide's Twitter feed, "Alabama pitching has only allowed one run in NCAA Tournament play, including a current streak of 28.2-straight scoreless innings." Ole Miss, having been no-hit for the first five innings by UCLA frosh Rachel Garcia, has cut the Bruins' lead in half, to 4-2, in the top of the sixth. A single, homer (by Brittany Finney),...

The schedules for all the super-regional match-ups are available here . Two series (Alabama at Florida, and Ole Miss at UCLA) will play their games on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (if necessary). The other six series will be held Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Two games are being played today, to finish off the regionals (scroll down to yesterday's entry and see chart). Oklahoma leads Tulsa 2-0 in today's winner-take-all game, with the Sooners batting in the top of the sixth... OU staged a dramatic comeback against the Golden Hurricane yesterday to force today's decisive game... Make that 3-0 Oklahoma ( Monday gametracker )... 3-0 is the final score as OU moves on to the super-regionals... In action late Sunday night, LSU defeated McNeese State and then Louisiana-Lafayette to force a decisive rematch today between LSU and ULL... ULL leads today's rematch 1-0, with the Rajin' Cajuns batting in the top of the third ( Monday gametracker )... LSU roars back to win 5-1 and advance to the supers ... When all is said and done, all 16 national seeds advance, the first time this has happened in the 13 years the super-regional format has been in effect. FLO Softball has a nice overview of the recently concluded regionals.

The following table shows the status of each regional. The "2-0" and "2-1" column headings reflect teams' records  entering  Sunday's play (with the exception of the Salt Lake City regional, which started a day earlier). Under the double-elimination format, the "2-1" team had to beat the "2-0" team twice on Sunday to advance.  Teams in bold (with game-article links) have advanced to the super-regionals. Region 2-0 2-1 Eliminated Eliminated Gainesville, FL Florida (1) Oklahoma St.* Florida Intl Florida A&M Tucson, AZ Arizona (2) S. Carolina St. Francis NM State Eugene, OR Oregon (3) Wisconsin Mizzou Illinois-Chi. Tallahassee, FL Florida St. (4) Georgia Jacksonville St. Princeton Los Angeles, CA UCLA (5) CS Fullerton San Jose St. Lehigh Seattle, WA Wash. (6) Michigan Fresno St. Montana Auburn, AL Auburn (7) Cal Notre Dame E. Tenn. St. Knoxville, TN Tenn. (8) Longwood Ohio St. SC-Upstate Coll. Station, TX Tex A&M ...

Although Minnesota received many statements of support after being omitted from the group of 16 nationally seeded teams, I felt there was also considerable pressure on the Gophers to prove the NCAA tournament committee wrong. Whatever pressure there was before has been increased tremendously, as the Gophers' vaunted offense was stymied in a 1-0 nine-inning loss to No. 16 seed Alabama... Minnesota will need to sweep three games (including two over Alabama) or its season is over! No. 10 seed Oklahoma looked to be in a bit of danger, trailing North Dakota State 2-0 after five innings. However, The Sooners scored a pair in the bottom of the sixth to tie things up ( gametracker )... Bison and Sooners will be going extras, as OU retired in the bottom of the seventh when batter thrown out trying to stretch a single into a double... NDSU scores in top of ninth, then, aided by this catch in the bottom half, closes out Oklahoma, 3-2. Oregon survives by the skin of its teeth against ...

I had the pleasure Tuesday morning of chatting with radio host Derek Martin of Iowa radio station KMA about the upcoming NCAA women's softball tournament. A recording of my segment, running about 10 minutes, is available at this link . The big topic in the interview, as indeed it is among college-softball observers nationwide, was the NCAA's exclusion of Minnesota among the 16 nationally seeded teams, forcing the Gophers to face a daunting road to the Women's College World Series. As I alluded to in the interview, not long after the NCAA's snub, the Gophers were announced as the No. 1 team in the nation in the weekly NFCA/ USA Today poll. Criticism of the NCAA's seedings continues to roll in . Toward the end of the interview, Derek pointed out that Minnesota frosh catcher Kendyl Lindaman is from Ankeny, Iowa and he told some interesting stories about her power-hitting prowess in high school. Now, at the NCAA level, Lindaman has a slugging percentage of .942 ,...

We're back once again with our annual geospatial map of where the 64 teams have been sent for regional play in the first weekend. This map allows you to see the extent to which the NCAA has kept regionals compact to save on travel costs, as opposed to sending teams across the country. For the last couple of years, I have used the Batch Geo website, which allows one to import an Excel list of schools (with addresses) and then generates a color-coded map, grouping schools by regional. There are 16 regional sites, each containing four schools, which would probably create too much clutter for most readers' tastes, so I have broken the regionals up into three graphs, one with six regionals and the other two with five each. The regional hosts are identified in a black horizontal bar at the bottom of each graph. "Balloons" of the same color within the same graph represent schools playing in the same regional. You can "hover" the cursor over a given balloon an...

Quarterfinal play in the SEC featured three upsets out of the four games (see bracket ): Eighth-seeded Mississippi shutout No. 1 Florida, 2-0. Sixth-seeded LSU took care of No. 3 Tennessee, 6-2. Fifth-seeded Alabama edged No. 4 Texas A&M, 2-1. Only second-seeded Auburn held form, blanking No. 7 Kentucky, 2-0. In Friday's opening quarterfinal of the B1G tourney , top-seeded Minnesota dismissed No. 8 Northwestern, 5-1. Currently, fourth-seeded Illinois bats in the bottom of the second, leading No. 12 Penn State, 2-0... Illinois wins 3-0 .... Third-seeded Ohio State beat No. 6 Wisconsin , 3-2... Finally, seventh-seeded Michigan State ousted intrastate rival and No. 2 seed University of Michigan, 5-4.

No. 2 Florida State's past week of play had its ups and downs, which I completely blanked on. Most hardcore college softball fans already know about the Seminoles' week, but to preserve this blog's historical record, I would still like to summarize what happened. A week ago, on Wednesday, May 3, Alex Powers powered FSU to an 11-inning walk-off win over No. 1 Florida, with a two-run homer. The Seminoles' jubilation would be short-lived, however. With your friendly blogger concentrating on key conference series such as Arizona-UCLA last weekend, I did not know that FSU was playing a non-conference series at No. 5 Oregon simultaneously. As it turned out, the Ducks swept three games from the Seminoles, the finale going nine innings.   These results, along with Arizona dropping two games (both shutouts) out of three to UCLA, really have shaken things up at the top of the national polls. Florida is now No. 1 in both major national polls. The ESPN.com/USA So...

After getting shut out by UCLA on Friday and Saturday , Arizona rebounded for a 7-2 win over the Bruins on Sunday. The win gave the Wildcats the conference championship.

UCLA scored an 8-0, run-rule, victory over Arizona in the opener of the teams' three-game series in Los Angeles. Saturday's (6:00 pm Pacific) and Sunday's (1:00 pm Pacific) games will be televised on ESPN 2. As the above-linked article notes, the Bruins have now won nine straight games. Six wins during this stretch were over the Pac 12's two weakest teams, Cal and Stanford, but UCLA's win over Arizona suggests the Bruins really may be getting hot with the postseason approaching.

With a 3-0 win tonight over Oklahoma State, OU has clinched its sixth straight conference title . This year, for the first time in seven years, the Big 12 will also play a conference tournament .