2019 NCAA Softball Championship

[flyingMoose]

The National Seeds, all of which host a double-elimination Regional, and the placement of the AAC teams:

#1 - Oklahoma

#2 - UCLA

#3 - Washington

#4 - Florida State - They are the defending National Champions.
USF is #3 in this pod and has the auto-bid for the AAC. They play South Carolina in their opening game. USF lost to the Gamecocks in very early March, but Corrick did not pitch in the game. The RPI for the Bulls is 31.

#5 - Florida

#6 - Arizona

#7 - Minnesota

#8 - Alabama

#9 - Texas
Houston is also a #3 in this pod. They had an RPI of 39 going into the week. They play Texas A&M in their first game. The Cougars have a mid-week win over the Aggies in late February. They lost to the Longhorns in mid-April and beat Sam Houston State, the other team in the Austin Regional, twice.

#10 - LSU

#11 - Ole Miss
Brittany Finney, a Carroll grad, is a P/1B for the Rebels.

#12 - Tennessee

#13 - Oklahoma State
Tulsa is the #3 seed in this pod. Their RPI was 24, the best in the AAC. The play Arkansas in their first game and defeated the Razorbacks in a mid-March, mid-week game. The Golden Hurricane also split with the Cowgirls in a home-and-home series.

#14 - Kentucky

#15 - Michigan

#16 - Northwestern


The number of National Seeds from each conference are:

6 - SEC (All thirteen of the SEC teams that play softball are in the Tournament.)
3 - Big 12
3 - Pac 12
3 - Big 10
1 - ACC

The Regionals start on Thursday or Friday.

[1972Shocker]

Go USF, Go Tulsa and Go Houston!

[flyingMoose]

Since BYU is at the Stillwater Regional, it will start on Thursday while all of the other Regionals start Friday. The first game of the Stillwater Regional is Arkansas v Tulsa. It has a 5pm CT start and is followed by Oklahoma State v BYU. Both of the games can be seen on ESPN3.

[flyingMoose]

Stillwater Regional

Tulsa 5-0 Arkansas

With a scoreless game heading into the seventh, the Hog's defense fell apart (three errors) and then the Hurricane had four consecutive singles, all part of five runs. Freshman Chenise Delce, the Rookie of the Year in the AAC, threw a five-hit shutout.


BYU 1-3 Oklahoma State

The Cowgirls received four walks in the first two innings and three of them scored. Samantha Show pitched a three-hitter for the win.


Tulsa and Oklahoma State play the first game of three in this Regional tomorrow before two elimination games.

[1972Shocker]

Tulsa lost to Okie State 10-13 in a slugfest but came back later to eliminate BYU 6-4.

[ShockTalk]

AAC is 4-1 so far.

[flyingMoose]

In addition to the results from Stillwater, USF defeated South Carolina 3-2 at the Tallahassee Regional, and Houston defeated Texas A&M 3-1 at the Austin Regional.

[1972Shocker]

Yep. Good showing for the AAC.

[flyingMoose]

All of the National Seeds except #15 Michigan advanced to the Super Regionals. James Madison won two games today to oust the Wolverines.

Supers are listed below with those winning an If game marked with asterisk. Eight of the Regionals required an If game.

16 Northwestern* at 1 Oklahoma*
9 Texas* at 8 Alabama
Texas beat Houston twice on Sunday.

12 Tennessee* at 5 Florida
13 Oklahoma State at 4 Florida State
The Cowgirls beat Tulsa to win their Regional. USF was part of the Tallahassee Regional.

14 Kentucky at 3 Washington
11 Ole Miss* at 6 Arizona

10 LSU* at 7 Minnesota
James Madison* at 2 UCLA*

[flyingMoose]

The qualifiers for the WCWS are:

1 Oklahoma 2-0 Northwestern
8 Alabama 2-1 Texas

5 Florida 2-1 Tennessee
13 Oklahoma State 2-1 Florida State

3 Washington 2-0 Kentucky
6 Arizona 2-0 Ole Miss

7 Minnesota 2-0 LSU
2 UCLA 2-0 James Madison

The first games are Thursday.

[flyingMoose]

The Championship Series begins Monday with 1 Oklahoma v 2 UCLA.

Oklahoma defeated Alabama in an If Game with UCLA defeating Washington and remaining undefeated in OKC.

[rrshock]

Was the OU loss to Alabama yesterday their first on quite some time?

[flyingMoose]

No, they also lost a game to Wisconsin in Regionals, 2-1, on back-to-back squeeze bunts. Before that loss to the Badgers, the Sooners had won 41 in a row.

[flyingMoose]

UCLA wins the Championship Series 2-0.

The first game was a 16-3 rout by UCLA.

UCLA took the lead in the first inning of the second game with a homer by each of their first two batters. Oklahoma was able to tie the game at 3-3 and again at 4-4 on a two-out solo homer in the top of the seventh. The Bruins scored on a two-out single in the bottom of the seventh when the runner barely beat the throw to the plate.

[shockerfanmas]

Barnhill from Florida was really bad about it. In fact I believe it was her sophomore year in which she was called for several illegal pitches through the season and tournament.

[WuDrWu]

Have they modified the jump pitch rule? The UCLA pitcher was clearly off the ground a lot.

[flyingMoose]

I noticed that. And she was not the only one during the tournament.

Despite the efforts of the groundskeepers, a shallow "hole" quickly develops when the game starts. I suspect that the emphasis is that if the toe is down and the pitcher is not "flying," then the pitcher gets the benefit of the doubt. My sense was that she was always well less than a full inch off the ground.

I know someone I can ask regarding instructions umpires have regarding this. I will come back and add his information later.

ADDITION: No changes in instructions for umpires. An umpire is not going to guess on this ruling. In real-time, I think this is really hard to see and, as mentioned above, the pitcher is going to get the benefit of the doubt

[WuShock16]

15 of the 16 national seeds advanced to Supers.

7 of 8 top seeds advanced to WCWS.

Top 2 seeds advanced to the Championship Series.

This takes NOTHING away from the student-athletes who are incredibly talented, but the lack of anything remotely resembling parity isn’t very interesting to me. You can see similar results in women’s volleyball and women’s basketball. Not sure what can be done about it, but it’s not very compelling...to me, anyway.

[shockerfanmas]

We are in agreement there. Very few true upsets in the women's basketball or softball tournaments. I still enjoy watching, and I'll watch most of the softball tournament every year, but when both the mens and women's basketball tournament are playing on the same days, 90% of the time I'm watching the men's tournament