Skip to main content

Arizona Suffers First Conference Loss; Hard-Luck Weekend for Texas Tech

No sooner had I written about the University of Arizona's dominating start to Pac-12 play (see previous post) than the Wildcats dropped a Saturday decision at Cal, 1-0 in nine innings. U of A  won the other two games of the series to improve its conference record to 17-1. As I noted in the previous post, series with Washington and UCLA await Arizona.

***

The hard-luck team of the weekend has to be Texas Tech. The Red Raiders were swept three straight against Oklahoma State in Stillwater. All three games were decided by one run: 3-2, 8-7, and 6-5 on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, respectively.

On Saturday, Tech led 7-0. OSU tied the game in the fifth inning on a two-out, two-run triple. The play could have been a lead-preserving out had the two Raider outfielders not collided with each other and jarred the ball loose from one of the mitts. In the sixth, the Cowgirls scored the go-ahead run on a one-out, bases-loaded grounder through the pitcher's legs. If the ball or the mitt is a few inches in another direction, perhaps the pitcher gets the lead runner at home.

On Sunday, OSU tied the game 3-3 in the fifth inning on another two-out, two-run fly, again just inches from the Tech right-fielder's grasp. Then, after the Red Raiders scored two in the top of the seventh to take a 5-3 lead, this happened (with two runners on)!

Texas A&M transfer Samantha Show (pronounced "Shau"), in addition to her game-winning home-run in Game 3, hit a two-run homer to tie Friday's game 2-2, and pitched complete games on Friday and Sunday (more impressively on Friday).

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...
Read more

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...
Read more
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.
Read more