Game 2 is about to start. Both teams are starting different pitchers tonight -- Ivy Renfroe for Tennessee and Michelle Gascoigne for Oklahoma -- than last night. The scoring gets underway much earlier tonight. Keilani Ricketts belts three-run homer in top of third to put Sooners on top...Ivy Renfroe yanked in favor of sister Ellen... A Lauren Chamberlain triple leads to another OU run in the top of the seventh... Vols now down to their final three outs... Bottom of the seventh for Tennessee goes uneventfully. Sooners win game 4-0 to capture national championship!

Game 1 of the two-out-of-three championship series is underway. OU's Keilani Ricketts has struck out the side in top of the first... Ellen Renfroe is starting in the circle for Tennessee. Ellen pitched the final 2 1/3 innings yesterday in the Vols' win over Texas, taking over for her sister Ivy... We get the first hit of the game in the bottom of the third, but still no runs. The Sooners' Lauren Chamberlain doubles to the wall in left field with a runner on first and two outs, and OU coach Patty Gasso gives the runner the stop sign. It definitely would have been a close play at the plate... Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. That may be what Tennessee is thinking. Ricketts, a power-hitter, bunts for a base hit in the bottom of the fourth. Then she steals second! OU threatening again with runners on first and second and two outs...Tennessee snares a hard liner to third, ending the threat... Vols draw walk to lead off top of fifth, ending Ricketts&#

Sunday's action is underway, with Texas leading Florida 3-0 after five innings. The loser is eliminated. The Gators have been getting runners on base, but haven't been able to get the key hit against Blaire Luna... Texas completes the 3-0 victory, eliminating Florida . Texas moves on to take on Tennessee in the evening session. A Vols win will put them in the championship series, whereas the Longhorns will have to beat the currently undefeated Vols twice (once today and once tomorrow) to advance... The next game will also pit a pair of one-loss teams -- Washington and Michigan -- against each other... The Huskies take it, 4-1. They'll next face Oklahoma. One win by the Sooners will send them to the championship series, whereas U-Dub would have to beat Oklahoma twice. A Lauren Gibson blast gives Tennessee a first-inning 1-0 lead over Texas...Vols bring 2-0 lead into bottom of seventh... Texas leads off inning with homer, cutting deficit to 2-1... But that's all

Heavy rains and another round of tornado activity in the Oklahoma City area forced cancellation of Friday night's action at the Women's College World Series. Our thoughts are with the people of the area. The two winners' bracket games from Friday -- Tennessee vs. Washington and Oklahoma vs. Texas -- have been moved to Saturday afternoon. These games will be followed by two losers' bracket (elimination) games: Florida vs. Nebraska and Arizona State vs. Michigan. At the end of Saturday's play, therefore, we will have two undefeated teams, four teams with one loss each, and two teams eliminated with two losses. To keep track of all this, I am providing one of my handy-dandy charts below, which I will continually update... Tennessee has edged Washington 1-0 on a walk-off single in the bottom of the seventh. The Vols left 13 runners on base during the game... Texas scores two on Oklahoma in the top of the third... The Sooners see the Longhorns' two and r

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!

A quick follow-up to yesterday's posting : Texas Tech scored today with one out in the bottom of the fourth inning, ending the Red Raiders' offensive scoreless streak at 32 innings. Tech's batters actually went wild for 7 runs on the day; the only problem is that Oklahoma scored 13 ( box score and play-by-play sheet ).

No. 1 Oklahoma is visiting Texas Tech this weekend, so I took in this afternoon's contest. The Red Raiders, who have made the NCAA tournament the past three years, are looking like they won't make it this year. The Sooners, on the other hand, continue to soar. In today's 6-0 OU win , Michelle Gascoigne was in the circle for the Sooners, so Tech only had to deal with star pitcher Keilani Ricketts as a batter (in the designated-player role). Unfortunately for the Raiders, Ricketts (shown at right walking up to the plate) hit a pair of homers today! In Friday night's series opener, Ricketts pitched a six-inning (run-ruled) no-hitter over Tech , as the final was 9-0 OU. Immediately prior to the Oklahoma series, the Raiders had also been no-hit last Sunday (for seven innings) in a 4-0 loss to Kansas . Tech was also shut-out by the Jayhawks 3-0 (seven innings) in the Saturday game of the KU series ; the Raiders got four hits in this game, the last with two outs in

The Big 12 is the last of the four major conferences to get going this season. Baylor and Texas played a two-game series last weekend -- swept by the Longhorns -- with the bulk of the teams beginning league play this weekend. The reason for the late start is that few Big 12 schools field softball teams and, with few teams, it doesn't take that long to play a conference schedule. Even when the conference actually had 12 schools, it was only a 10-team league for softball, as Colorado and Kansas State didn't compete in the sport. The first wave of conference realignment saw two Big 12 teams depart: Nebraska to the Big 10 and Colorado to the Pac 12. The net result was the loss of one Big 12 softball program (Nebraska), bringing the league down to nine teams. In the next phase of realignment, however, the Big 12 lost two softball programs to the SEC -- and pretty darn good ones, at that. Missouri made the Women's College World Series in 2009, 2010, and 2011, whereas Texas

Conference play begins this weekend in the Big 10 and Pac 12 . Click on the links for previews.

The annual Judi Garman Classic in Fullerton, California, and the Tennessee-Florida SEC series topped this weekend's play. First, here are the highlights from the Garman. Led by Keilani Ricketts, top-ranked Oklahoma didn't allow a run all tournament in five games. Admittedly, the Sooners' opponents (Pacific, NC State, Arizona, Penn State, and Cal State Fullerton) were not the best available at the tournament. Several other teams lost only one game each. Michigan went 4-1, beating Washington, 6-1, Arizona State, 5-4, Arizona, 9-1, and NC State, 1-0, but losing a 3-2 decision to Virginia Tech. Arizona State (4-1), along with the loss to Michigan, defeated Fullerton, 9-0, Texas, 3-0, Virginia Tech, 11-0, and Pacific, 5-4. Texas (4-1) bounced back from its opening loss to ASU by knocking off Penn State, 8-4, Washington, 4-1, NC State, 7-4, and DePaul, 8-3. In Gainesville, Florida took two out of three from Tennessee, with all three contests going to extra innings.

The annual Judi Garman Classic at Cal State Fullerton gets underway today and runs through Sunday. Top teams include three from the Pac 12 (No. 2 Arizona State, No. 14/19 Arizona, and No. 16/18 Washington), along with No. 1 Oklahoma, No. 9/10 Texas, No. 14/15 Michigan, and No. 21-tie/unranked Virginia Tech. Click here for the tournament page.

After losing the first two games of a three-game series to Tennessee, No. 1/2 Alabama salvaged one win in the series Sunday, by a 7-1 score. Immediately prior to the Tennessee series, the Crimson Tide had lost to Florida, giving Bama a stunning three-game losing streak. Oklahoma, also a No. 1 team depending on the poll, swept a pair of games each from Northern Colorado and Drake this weekend. Something I had missed is that the Sooners suffered their first (and thus far only) loss of the season on March 2, to former Big 12 rival Nebraska, 1-0. There are no longer any undefeated NCAA Division I teams in the nation.

No. 4 Florida handed No. 1/2 Alabama its first loss of the season last night, 8-4. The game was tight most of the way, until the Gators broke things open late.

Alabama (22-0), ranked No. 1 and 2 in the two major national polls, begins a tough stretch of SEC play today. The Tide hosts No. 4 Florida (22-1) tonight at 6:00 Central, then travels to Tennessee for a three-game weekend series against the Vols (No. 8/10, 19-3) beginning Friday. This Alabama preview refers to the Tide-Gator match-up as a "non-conference affair," even though both schools are in the SEC. My reading of the situation is that, with SEC expansion and the need to keep the conference schedule to a reasonable length, the league opted not to have every team play each other in a three-game series. Alabama-Florida evidently would have been one of those potential match-ups not on the schedule this year. However, given the two teams' success in recent years and the visibility to the sport of having them play, the Tide and Gators thus decided to meet for one game, even though it will not count in the conference standings. Tennessee's website already has a prev

This week's top destination appears to be the Citrus Classic in Orlando, Florida. The 26-team field includes six ranked squads: Texas A&M, Texas, LSU, Oregon, Michigan, and Louisville. Spy Softball provides a more detailed preview .

Here are some of the top performing teams at this weekend's Mary Nutter Classic in Cathedral City, California, near Palm Springs: No. 1/2 Oklahoma breezed through its five games , shutting out the opponent in four of them. The Sooners' biggest-name opponent was No. 14/19 Arizona. UCLA went 5-0 , with wins over No. 4 Tennessee, Maryland, Oklahoma State, No. 10/11 LSU, and Nevada. These wins should catapult the No. 13/16 Bruins into the national Top 10. Unranked Northwestern (5-0), whose victims included Tennessee .  Oregon State, which went 5-0 (although not against any elite teams) and has now won 11 straight overall . The Beavers are unranked, although they are listed as receiving some votes for the Top 25 in the USA Today/NFCA poll. Cal went 4-0, although the No. 8 Golden Bears did not face elite opposition. No. 7 Missouri went 3-0, edging its new SEC rival , No. 5 Florida 4-3 in 12 innings. The loss was the Gators' only one of the tourney. Separate from the Nutte

The annual Cathedral City tournament, in the Palm Springs, California, area, opens today. The event is now named for Mary Nutter , who died last summer. By my count, 37 teams are on hand. These include several highly ranked squads, such as Oklahoma (1/2), Tennessee (4), Florida (5), Missouri (7), Cal (8), LSU (10/11), and Oregon (11/9). The master schedule is available here .

Oklahoma, ranked No. 1 in one of the major national polls and No. 2 in the other, highlights the field at San Diego State's Campbell-Cartier Classic . Two other nationally ranked teams, Washington and Kentucky, are among the field of seven.

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 .

Arizona State's annual Kajikawa Classic, which begins tonight, brings together several of the nation's highest-rated teams in the preseason polls (click here for schedule). In addition to the No. 4-ranked host Sun Devils, the field includes No. 2 Oklahoma, No. 3 Cal, and No. 5/6 Oregon, which was featured in an ESPN.com column yesterday. Links to the two major polls, ESPN/USA Softball and USA Today/NFCA, are available in the right-hand column of this page. No. 1 Alabama opens its season Friday in a somewhat unusual venue. The UNI-Dome Classic , played on the turf inside Northern Iowa's indoor football stadium, mainly draws other midwestern schools, who can't be expected to play games outdoors in early February. This year, however, the Crimson Tide will be joining the gathering. (Update: Here's an ESPN.com column on Alabama .)

With the 2013 college softball season starting this coming Thursday, February 7, the major preseason polls are now out. In the ESPN/USA Softball Poll , defending NCAA champion Alabama is ranked No. 1 and last year's national runner-up Oklahoma is ranked second. Cal, Arizona State, Tennessee, and Oregon round out the top six. The USA Today/NFCA Poll likewise has 'Bama, OU, Cal, and ASU as the top four. One slight difference is that USAT/NFCA has Oregon No. 5 and Tennessee No. 6. Interestingly, the two historically dominant programs are not highly ranked this year. Arizona is pegged at No. 13 (USAT/NFCA) and 14 (ESPN/USAS), whereas UCLA is ranked 19th in both polls.

College Sports Madness, which appears to be a relatively new site covering college sports, has released its 2013 softball preview . The site is also providing reports on its preseason top 44 teams , one team per day, leading up to opening day. I have added a permanent link to the CSM softball page in the links column to the right.