NCAA Softball Tournament

[SECbbfan24]

The game has changed so much over the past 20 years. It has gone from a small ball, slapping, one dominant pitcher going for ridiculous numbers of innings (Danielle Lawry anyone?) style to a sport where the power teams have pitching staffs going three of four deep and offensively play much more of a power game. I don't have a preference, as both styles of play are exciting in their own way, but slapping (with recent rule changes) and small ball seem to be slowly disappearing from the women's game. One of the criticisms of the Weekly's is that they haven't adapted to the current style of play.

I feel like Roger's arm is gonna fall off but happy they got the win, she deserved it last night.

 

[tchalla1]

Were it not for errors that resulted in one big inning - and Ok State's 2nd basemen (who honestly looked horrendous in that series), Oklahoma loses the series against Oklahoma State. They hit better than OU in that last game. Which makes me kinda think the margin between Oklahoma and the rest isn't as huge as we originally thought. Georgia beat them also, even tho you can construe that as just one game and not really telling.

UCLA's top 3 pitchers are really awesome...... agreed, and those Pac 12 games are often 1-0, 2-1.

I think the SEC is a threat tho. It doesn't sound like you watch the SEC at all, but I think they can upset UCLA or Oklahoma. Maybe not UCLA, but Florida can play those close games (3-2 scores), they rarely makes errors - and they're really good in tight, close games. Their top 3 pitchers is great too tho not at the level of UCLA's. And Alabama is currently hot. I think they stand a better chance against Oklahoma than UCLA actually. Just because of the way they play, and force others to play.

Yes I think the Gators win the SEC, because of their team defense and they rarely make errors.... Florida vs. Bama and Gators come out on top...

 

[SimpleDawg]

My understanding of Ashley Rogers' pains is that all that throwing and ball coming off her nails has created skidmarks on her fingers. Sort of stinging blisters. Mostly burns from overthrowing.

Tennessee has won. Just rest her now and get her on some extra rubbing alcohol for one week. There is literally no need for them to beat Alabama.

 

[nwhoopfan]

My Huskies crapped themselves in Palo Alto today. Lost both games of a double header to a mediocre team. Their ace lost the first game 4-1. Then they got run ruled 8-0 in the 2nd game, went thru 3 pitchers. Really not how you want to be ending the regular season. 1 more against Stanford tomorrow. They did win the first game in the series Thursday night.

Meanwhile UCLA is beating up Arizona, winning the first 2 in the series. UA was leading in game 3 though.

 

[triaddukefan]

Florida State had won six straight ACC tournament championships....... there won't be a seventh

 

[triaddukefan]

Great double play vs Louisville

 

[triaddukefan]

ACC Championship on now... ESPN. #1 Clemson vs #3 Duke

 

[nwhoopfan]

Who you callin' mediocre?! We are hopeful those wins solidified our NCAA bid and a return to the tournament after wandering through the desert of (way more than mere) mediocrity for the past half decade.

I'd expect Stanford to get in. Creeping up near .500 in conference and well over for overall record. Meanwhile UW might be jeopardizing hosting thru Super Regionals. On paper the Dawgs seem like a Championship contender but they sure don't look like it at the moment. WAY too many good hitters to be generating so little offense. The pitching is a disaster other than Plain, and she might be showing signs of being worn out after throwing too many games and innings this season.

 

[triaddukefan]

Three more outs... three more outs

 

[triaddukefan]

Duke knocks off #1 Seed Clemson... 1-0

 

[nwhoopfan]

Arizona did take one from UCLA last night. They were leading 1-0 most of the way thru the game today...until UCLA exploded for 7 runs in the 5th.

Let's see if my Huskies can get back on track today. Just underway.

 

[JDuro]

Duke knocks off #1 Seed Clemson... 1-0

 

[SimpleDawg]

UCLA, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Florida are the 4 best teams in the country.

I can see somewhat of a small chance that Oklahoma St and Florida St can win the whole thing, but I think the Top 4 are clearly the best 4 teams in the country and it's gonna be a dogfight between those 4 in Oklahoma City.

Also..........Ashley Rogers, Elizabeth Hightower, and Montana Fouts are the Top 3 SEC pitchers BY FAR.

 

[nwhoopfan]

Let's see if my Huskies can get back on track today.

Not what I had in mind. They did win 1-0. 2 runs scored in the last 3 games. Bats have completely disappeared.

 

[nwhoopfan]

Washington got the #16 (and final) seed. That is totally insane. They were a top 5 ranked team almost the entire season. There is no possible way for the committee to justify this. If they win their Regional they'll get to face Oklahoma in the Super Regional.

 

[SimpleDawg]

Washington got the #16 (and final) seed. That is totally insane. They were a top 5 ranked team almost the entire season. There is no possible way for the committee to justify this. If they win their Regional they'll get to face Oklahoma in the Super Regional.

Insane. They beat Arizona and Arizona St twice, beat Oregon 3 times, and even their bad losses to Stanford they took 2 out of 4 over them.

Texas is #12, they're not good at all lol. They're 0-7 against Oklahoma and Oklahoma St and they don't have any wins against any amazing teams.... except maybe LSU who doesn't really pass the eye test of a #7 team. Mississippi State can beat Texas. If it wasn't for a bad late bat contact call, we win that game against them, and I think we feel good about a rematch if it gets there. (probably not)

Huskies walked out of the room.... lol. They're quite unhappy.

 

[nwhoopfan]

Does Clemson have a beef? Not only unseeded, but shipped off to face Bama in Tuscaloosa. Pretty rough for the regular season ACC champ. 29-5 in conference 42-6 overall. Florida St. and Duke were both seeded.

 

[triaddukefan]

Does Clemson have a beef? Not only unseeded, but shipped off to face Bama in Tuscaloosa. Pretty rough for the regular season ACC champ. 29-5 in conference 42-6 overall. Florida St. and Duke were both seeded.

Someone commented on a Duke site that Clemson didn't play either Florida State or Notre Dame... and lost 2 games to both VPI and Duke in the regular season. So that's probably why they didn't get seeded.

Meanwhile Duke got a #13 seed... but was placed in the Athens region along with UGA. First game for Duke??? vs UNC-Greensboro (my spartans)

 

[nwhoopfan]

Someone commented on a Duke site that Clemson didn't play either Florida State or Notre Dame... and lost 2 games to both VPI and Duke in the regular season. So that's probably why they didn't get seeded.

Meanwhile Duke got a #13 seed... but was placed in the Athens region along with UGA. First game for Duke??? vs UNC-Greensboro (my spartans)

I didn't do a deep dive. Darned imbalanced conference schedules make it really hard to judge various teams.

 

[undersized]

Another insane thing about Washington's seed is they have to face Michigan in their regional. The second best Pac-12 team and the top Big Ten team should not be in the same regional. Michigan deserved the #16 seed and Washington deserved much higher. The RPI's of all the SEC teams are highly inflated.

Also insane is the amount of intraconference superregionals. Assuming the seeded teams all advance out of their regionals (which is far from given), the super match-ups would be:
#1 Oklahoma vs. #16 Washington (This should be a WWCS match-up?!?!?)
#2 UCLA vs. #15 ASU (Both Pac 12?!?!?)
#3 Alabama vs. #14 Kentucky (Both SEC?!?!?)
#4 Florida vs. #13 Duke
#5 Oklahoma St. vs. #12 Texas (Both Big 12?!?!?)
#6 Arkansas vs. #11 Arizona
#7 LSU vs. #10 Florida St.
#8 Missouri vs. #9 Tennessee (Both SEC ?!?!?)

So much wrong...

 

[enigmatic]

I certainly can agree that the SEC is the nation's strongest softball conference top to bottom but what I don't agree with is that it was worthy enough to have 8 of the seeded 16 teams. Regardless, I won't be rooting for the SEC at all anyway because my team is UCLA but I wouldn't mind seeing Oklahoma and my Hawaii girl Jocelyn Alo take it again. Also would like to see Arizona make a deep run since they are the reason why I started watching softball initially with the teams of Jenny Dalton and the two Leahs (Braatz and O'Brien-Amico). Can't believe they haven't won a title since 2007 considering how much they dominated the sport from the mid 90's until then but its understandable the rest of the country had already caught up to them.

 

[undersized]

'Disrespect': Michigan softball won't host NCAA Regional, will head to Seattle

The 18th-ranked Wolverines (36-6) will face Seattle University in the double-elimination regional at 8 p.m. Friday on ESPN2.

www.detroitnews.com

From Michigan head coach Carol Hutchins: "(The NCAA selection committee) absolutely did not do a very good job," Hutchins, in her 37th season as Michigan head coach, said Sunday night. "They disrespected our entire conference and you know what, they have to give credence to all different areas of the country. Clearly there’s a little bias with at least one conference in particular. I would say the NCAA committee, I’m not very pleased with at all.... Disrespect. No more comment. Don’t ask me about them."

It's sad that the top two teams from the Big 10 (Michigan and Minnesota) are matched up with the top two teams from the Pac 12 (Washington and UCLA) in the regionals. It's unfair to both conferences.

 

[dws3665]

The B1G screwed themselves by playing a conference only schedule this year. The Committee did not have any basis for comparing them to other schools, and there were a lot of questionable losses within the conference across the board this season.

I do think that what happened to Washington is ... hard to explain. Their RPI was at 16, so the Committee did put them right where they fell on that metric, but it did not do that with other schools, notably Oklahoma (#4 RPI - the Sooners are great, but their OOC was Marshmallow City).

 

[undersized]

The B1G screwed themselves by playing a conference only schedule this year. The Committee did not have any basis for comparing them to other schools, and there were a lot of questionable losses within the conference across the board this season.

I do think that what happened to Washington is ... hard to explain. Their RPI was at 16, so the Committee did put them right where they fell on that metric, but it did not do that with other schools, notably Oklahoma (#4 RPI - the Sooners are great, but their OOC was Marshmallow City).

Re: B1G. Let me put it differently. The committee just decided to punt on the B1G. They basically said, “We can’t evaluate the strength of your best teams, so they aren’t going to the WCWS unless they can beat the #1 or #2 team on the road. And we will make your third-best team compete as an at-large 4-seed. And, since we really don’t want ANY of your teams to even make a super this year (self-fulfilling prophecy that the B1G has no quality teams) we’ll just make your champion beat the best pitcher in college softball twice on the road just to have a chance to face Oklahoma. But we will reward mid-level SEC teams with a much easier path to Oklahoma City even though those teams have proven in conference play that they are not among the elite."

 

[nwhoopfan]

Uh oh. It's early, but Pac 12 falling on it's face so far in Regionals. Stanford losing isn't a big deal but Arizona St. was not supposed to lose to VA Tech. They are hosting.