ESPN.com's Graham Hays is out with his preview of the Women's College World Series.

Here are the match-ups for the super-regionals, which begin tomorrow. I will update the table as the results come in (links are to game articles). Teams Game 1 Game 2 Game 3 Texas A&M (16) at ASU (1) ASU ASU --- Stanford (15) at Alabama (2) Stanford Alabama Alabama Houston at Oklahoma St. Okla. St. Houston Okla. St. Oregon (13) at Florida (4) Florida Florida --- Washington (12) at Missouri (5) Missouri Missouri --- Baylor (11) at Georgia (6) Baylor Georgia Baylor Cal (7) at Kentucky Cal Kentucky Cal Oklahoma (9) at Arizona (8) Oklahoma Oklahoma --- HTML Tables

The table below tells the story heading into today's play -- who needs just one win to advance to the super-regionals, and who needs two. Numbers in parentheses refer to teams' seedings. If a team needing two wins gets its first win, I will put an asterisk (*) by that team. I am also adding links to articles about teams winning their regionals, in the far right column. Regional Needs 1 win Needs 2 wins Champion Tempe AZ Arizona State (1) San Diego State Arizona State Tuscaloosa AL Alabama (2) Chattanooga Alabama Austin TX Houston Louisiana-Lafayette Houston Gainesville FL Florida (4) UCLA* Florida Columbia MO DePaul Missouri (5)* Missouri Athens GA Georgia (6) Florida State Georgia Louisville KY California (7) Louisville California Tucson AZ Arizona (8) Texas Tech Arizona Norman OK Oklahoma (9) Tulsa* Oklahoma Ann Arbor MI ...

The seeded teams have been holding their own, for the most part, thus far. However, No. 10 seed Michigan has  lost to Kentucky , 7-6, in early Saturday play. The Wolverines' furious comeback attempt from a 7-0 deficit, consisting of a run in the sixth and 5 in the seventh, fell just short. I'll be posting occasional updates throughout the weekend. In other play early Saturday, UCLA jumped out to a quick 2-0 lead over No. 4 seed Florida, but the Gators came back for a 4-2 victory. As Saturday's play unfolds, things are not going so well for the national seeds, after all. In addition to the Michigan loss... Houston scored a run in the first against No. 3 seed Texas, and made it hold up in a 1-0 victory. Oklahoma State has just spanked No. 14 Tennessee, 6-1. DePaul has outlasted No. 5 Missouri, 2-1, in 11 innings. As Saturday's play moved toward early evening, Michigan seemed virtually certain to be the first seeded team to be shown the door. H...

As visitors to this site over the past month are probably aware, I ran a little non-scientific poll on who you all thought should be the favorite to win the Women's College World Series. With the bulk of the NCAA tournament getting underway today, it's time to look at the final poll results... Arizona State, No. 1 in the NCAA seeding and in the media/coaches polls, came in first in our reader poll, garnering nearly 30% of the 175 votes cast. Second place was "Other," with nearly 20% of the vote. I have no way of knowing for sure which specific teams voters were thinking of when they selected "Other." Likely candidates would seem to be Missouri (No. 5 seed) and Cal (No. 7 seed). Michigan and Alabama were the only other teams to receive at least 10% of readers' votes. The NCAA website's softball section has both a scoreboard and a  brackets page available for following tournament action. Over at Lateral Sports, you can look up and connect to Inte...

The NCAA tournament begins today, with the Seattle region (Washington, Portland State, Auburn, and BYU). This regional is starting a day earlier than the other 15, apparently to accommodate BYU's school policy of not competing on Sundays. The host Huskies, a participant in the last two Women's College World Series and 2009 national champions, started off the 2011 season 20-0 and rose to as high as No. 4 in the national rankings. However, their non-conference schedule was not of the highest difficulty. U-Dub went on to compile a 9-12 record in the Pac 10, yielding a No. 12 seed for the NCAA tourney. Auburn recently made some noise by upsetting highly ranked Florida in the SEC tournament. BYU played a number of nationally ranked teams during the season , going 5-8. The Cougars have won 26 of their last 28 games, playing against Mountain West Conference opponents and non-conference teams from the immediate region (e.g., Southern Utah, Utah Valley, Idaho State). NOTES... ...

At roughly four hours post-announcement of the NCAA tournament brackets  (which translates to 1:30 a.m. Central), this is one of my fastest turnarounds for posting my annual geo-spatial bracket! Unless you have some really fine eyesight, you are urged to click on the map to enlarge it. Each clustering shows the teams playing in a given region, shaded in the color of the host school (the home team is also underlined). I would say 15 of the 16 regions are geographically compact, to one extent or another. Only one regional, which I am calling the "super-jumbled" regional, is really a grab-bag, sending No. 7-seeded Cal to Louisville, along with Illinois-Chicago and Jacksonville State (Alabama); these teams are seen as red blocks. I would say the Alabama (No. 2 seed), Texas (No. 3), Missouri (No. 5), Georgia (No. 6), and (arguably) the Michigan (No. 10) regionals are extremely compact. There are several others, such as the Florida (No. 4) and Stanford (No. 15) regions, in whi...