With this year's WCWS set to begin tomorrow morning at 11:00 Central with UCLA taking on Texas, I wanted to examine how upset-laden the 2022 NCAA tournament has been. I also wanted to feature my new-look design! To start the discussion, I created a graphic to show which of the seeded (and unseeded) teams have made it to Oklahoma City. (You can click on the graphics to enlarge them.)
If the seeding had been perfectly predictive, of course, then eight of the eight top-seeded teams would be in OKC. Instead, only three of the eight top-seeded teams are (the Nos. 1, 5, and 7 teams), the lowest total since the advent of super-regional play in 2005. If the seeding had been just a little off, we would expect some of the teams seeded Nos. 9-16 to fill in the gaps. However, only two of these teams qualified for the WCWS (Nos. 9 and 14). That leaves three openings, which of necessity are filled by unseeded teams.
Of the unseeded teams, two looked at various points in the regular season like OKC would be the last place they would be during the first week of June. I'm talking about Texas and Arizona. The Longhorns got off to a rough start, losing all five of their games in February's St. Pete/Clearwater Elite tournament. Texas did improve over the season, however, ending up as one of only two teams (Oklahoma State being the other) to beat No. 1 Oklahoma thus far.
Arizona is another matter. As shown in the following screen-capture from the Pac 12 website, U of A finished tied with Cal for last place (with 8-16 records) among the nine conference schools that field softball teams.
In late March, not only did the Wildcats get swept by UCLA; they didn't even score a run in any of the three games. Seeing all the home runs Arizona has slugged in the NCAA tourney thus far, it is hard to believe any team could have shut the Wildcats out three straight games, but it happened! Further, unlike Texas, which sent a message with its win over OU, Arizona never did anything similar, in my view. In fact, in U of A's last six games of the regular season (three each against Cal and Stanford), the Wildcats went 2-4. But here they are!
Oklahoma has to be the prohibitive favorite. Assuming the Sooners make the championship series, who they will face remains anyone's guess!