With the NCAA women's softball brackets being announced last Sunday night, I'm back once again with my annual geospatial maps of the 64 teams' assignments to the 16 four-team regional sites. Each site is hosted by one of the 16 nationally seeded teams, with three outside teams coming in. These are depicted in the maps below (each map shows only a few different regionals, to reduce clutter). Starting times for all games are available by clicking here and then scrolling down when the new page comes up.
This year's No. 1 seed is Texas, which will have three northern teams (Northwestern, St. Francis [Pennsylvania], and Siena [New York]) coming to Austin. This is the Longhorn program's first time ever as the national top seed. No. 2 is three-time defending Women's College World Series winner Oklahoma, also with three northern teams coming in (Oregon, Cleveland State, and Boston University). The Longhorns (23-4 in conference) edged out the Sooners (22-5) for the Big 12 regular-season title. Texas and Oklahoma split four games during the season, with the Horns taking the April 5-7 conference series two games to one, but the Sooners prevailing in the Big 12 tournament final.
Oklahoma State (21-6) finished just behind Texas and OU in the Big 12 (and took two of three from the Sooners in their conference series), but were seeded only No. 5. The tournament committee awarded the Nos. 3 and 4 national seeds to the SEC's top teams, Tennessee (19-5 conference record) and Florida (17-7, plus tournament title), respectively.
As a Michigan grad-school alum, I've followed the Wolverines closely as they've made it to the Oklahoma State regional. After UM struggled last year (26-25, 10-13) in coach Bonnie Tholl's first year replacing the legendary Carol Hutchins, this year's Maize and Blue improved to 41-16 overall and 17-5 in the B1G, and won the conference tournament. Slugger Keke Tholl, the
coach's niece, has
led the Wolverines' offense.
UCLA, my undergraduate alma mater, had a
nice midseason turnaround after a slow start, propelling it to Pac 12 regular-season (17-4) and tourney titles, and a No. 6 national seed. The Bruins will try to bounce back from last year's NCAA embarrassment when, as the No. 2 national seed, they lost to Grand Canyon and Liberty for a quick two-and-done elimination.
Missouri (43-15, 13-11 in the SEC) is the No. 7 seed. Mizzou's main credentials for such a high seed would seem to be taking two of three from Florida in the regular season and reaching the SEC tourney final before losing to the Gators. Missouri had several good wins this season (Utah, Clemson, two of three from Auburn, two of three from LSU, but nothing else on a par with the Florida series win. The Tigers face a tough regional with the University of Washington coming to Columbia. The Huskies (13-10) tied with Oregon for third in the Pac 12.
Stanford, which made the national semifinals at last year's WCWS and gave Oklahoma all it could handle, is this year's No. 8 seed after finishing second in the Pac 12 (17-7). Cardinal pitcher NiJaree Canady followed up last year's breakout first-year season (0.57 ERA, 0.63 WHIP [Walks and Hits per Innings Pitched]) with a slightly better 0.50 ERA and another 0.63 WHIP. To the extent the Cardinal had a problem this season, it was with the aluminum. Stanford went 43-13 overall and in those 13 losses, the Cardinal averaged 1.54 runs per game offensively. Mississippi State will be coming to Palo Alto, providing a good test of the SEC's depth. Another SEC team, LSU, is seeded ninth.
Duke, in only its sixth (non-COVID) season as a program, is the No. 10 seed. The Blue Devils captured the ACC regular-season (20-4) and tournament championships. Georgia (11) and Arkansas (12) give the SEC two more national seeds. One of the teams coming to Fayetteville will be historical power Arizona. The Wildcats finished fifth in the Pac 12 at 13-11, just behind Washington and Oregon. In 2021, Arizona went into Arkansas and
stunned the Razorbacks in a super-regional series.
No. 13 seed Louisiana-Lafayette made headlines earlier this spring by
snapping Oklahoma's 71-game winning streak. The Ragin' Cajuns had started the season 9-12 heading into the OU game, but ULL went 33-5 the rest of the way (including the win over Oklahoma) to finish 42-17 overall. No. 14 Alabama suffered its
first-ever conference losing record (10-14), but so strong is the SEC that a losing record doesn't preclude a national seeding.
The final two national seeds are last year's WCWS runner-up Florida State (No. 15) and yet another SEC squad, No. 16 Texas A&M. One of the teams visiting A&M will be Texas State (although the arrow on the map may be hard to see), which defeated Louisiana-Lafayette to
win the Sun Belt conference tournament.
I hope everyone enjoys the tournament! ESPN.com has provided a list of
10 "must-watch" players whose talents will be on display.
