Here is this upcoming season's schedule of telecasts on ESPN and its partner networks. The ESPN news release alludes to teams' preseason rankings. Here are links to the ESPN/USA Softball and USA Today/NFCA preseason polls. The two polls concur in ranking Tennessee No. 1 and Oklahoma No. 2, a reversal of the results of last year's Women's College World Series.

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...