Skip to main content
END-OF-THE-DAY UPDATE

Day 1 of the NCAA Women's College World Series ended a short time ago, with UCLA edging Pac-10 rival Arizona, 1-0. Both teams started off a little shaky in the field, resulting in numerous baserunners for whomever was batting at the time. The Bruins got a key first-inning hit by Amanda Kamekona to drive in the game's only run. After a few innings, both starting pitchers -- UCLA's Anjelica "Jelly" Selden and U of A's Taryne Mowatt -- settled down, and there were few offensive threats by either team the rest of the way.

In the first game of the evening session, it looked like Alabama's strategy of pitching around Arizona State slugger Kaitlin Cochran was going to work, as the Tide took a 1-0 lead into the Sun Devils' at-bats in the top of the seventh. Other ASU players started getting key hits, however, and the result was a 3-1 Sun Devil win.

The two afternoon games took place while I was at the office, so I only obtained periodic score updates on the computer and did not follow the games closely. In these contests, unseeded Louisiana-Lafayette upset No. 1-seed Florida, 3-2, and Texas A&M pushed across a run in the sixth to get by Virginia Tech, 1-0.

An ESPN.com article summarizing all of the Opening Day games is available here. Also, you can visit the team-specific webpages via the links on the right, to get more information on the games of your favorite school.

Two games will be played on Friday, both in the evening, featuring today's winning teams. Texas A&M will take on Louisiana-Lafayette, followed by another all-Pac 10 match-up, between Arizona State and UCLA.

EARLY REPORT

The NCAA Women's College World Series will be getting underway momentarily (at 12:00 Central), with top-seeded Florida taking on Louisiana-Lafayette. This game will be followed, in order, by Texas A&M-Virginia Tech, Alabama-Arizona State, and UCLA-Arizona. These games will be televised on ESPN. The official NCAA bracket is available here.

ESPN.com's Graham Hays has an excellent team-by-team rundown of the series participants. As always, you can find additional information by looking at the individual teams' official websites via the links on the right-hand side of the present page.

Popular posts from this blog

Few minutes after 6:00 pm Central: We now have our eighth team for the Women's College World Series, Oregon State (in the postings below, all WCWS qualifiers are depicted in bold). The Beavers defeated Cal 3-0 and then 1-0 today, to take the teams' super-regional series 2-1. 4:40 pm Central: We have the identities of two more teams going to the WCWS (bringing the total to seven), but Oregon State has stayed alive against Cal, forcing a third and deciding game to determine the one remaining team for the World Series. Leave it to the Beavers! Here are the two teams (in bold) that have earned bids to Oklahoma City thus far today: Tennessee , which edged Michigan 1-0 in what must have been a very dramatic finish to those who saw it live. The reason I say must have been is that ESPN cut away to show a live Barry Bonds at-bat in his quest for 715 home runs, a number that would surpass Babe Ruth for second on the all-time list. Sure enough, Bonds blasted one deep into the c...

2012 Geospatial Map of NCAA Tournament

Here is my annual geospatial map of the NCAA regional assignments. The official NCAA bracket is listed here . Each of the 16 regional sites has its own color code. For example, the geographically compact University of Florida region, hosted by the No. 5 seed Gators and also featuring Central Florida, South Florida, and Florida Gulf Coast, depicts the teams in blue boxes with orange letters. Two of the most spread-out regions are:  The one hosted by top-seed Cal, whose visitors include Arkansas, Iona (NY), and Boston University. These teams are shown in dark-blue boxes with yellow lettering. The University of Washington (No. 16 seed) region, whose participants (depicted in purple boxes with yellow letters) include Texas Tech, Maryland, and Harvard. Overall, the seedings are about what I had expected them to be (other years have presented greater surprises). Conference highlights (and lowlights) include: Of the nine Pac 12 schools that field softball teams, eight got in t...
Stanford swept the Oregon schools to hold first place in the Pac 10 at 5-1. Washington swept the Arizona schools , leaving the Huskies, Sun Devils, and Wildcats tied for second, each at 4-2. UCLA edged Arizona 3-2 on Sunday to break a four-game conference losing streak.