Jordan Taylor a finalist for USA Softball Player of the Year.

Submitted by MGoSoftball on

Jordan Taylor is one of 4 pitchers selected as a finalist for the USA Softball Player of the Year award.  Michelle Smith gave her some nice props on ESPN as Michelle was doing Color for the SEC Tourney.

Here is a link from the mothership. http://www.mgoblue.com/sports/w-softbl/spec-rel/051211aaa.html

Congrats Jordan.  We are all so very proud of you.  Go Blue

justingoblue

May 13th, 2011 at 1:11 AM ^

Not that it'll matter by the time I log on in the morning (the gf's team has one loss in the Summit tournament) but how do the regional seedings for softball work this year? And the supers as well?

Thanks MGoSoftball!

MGoSoftball

May 13th, 2011 at 6:35 AM ^

The pairings will be announced Sunday night.  If I had to guess, I would say we will be paired with KY, ND, Nebraska or possibly a Pac 10 team that will host a regional at Columbus.  ND is doing just well enough not to be in our regional.  But then again, the Tournament Committee will do their own thing anyway and do something stupid per usual.

There were 3 teams from out west that had to travel and then host a Regional.  This is due to the concentration of Pac 10 schools at the top.  They all cant have a home site because there isnt enough at large bid schools out there to go around.  So the lower seeded schools will have to travel to their regional but they will be the "ranked" or "seeded" team.

So the pairing go like this.  The TC will have 34 automatic bids from the conferences and 30 at large bids for a total of 64 teams that make the tourney.   The Big 10 automatic bid will probably be us if we can sweep lil' sister this weekend.   Then the TC ranks these 64 teams according to who knows what.  The top 16 teams will be ranked accordingly and this is called "National Seedings".

Each National Seeded team will be paired with 3 other teams to form a regional.  So the winner of the #1 regioinal will play the winner of the #16 regional, #2 plays #15 and #3 plays #14 and so on.  So it is possible for the team ranked #2 and the team ranked $15 to both lose their regional but the winners of said regionals will still play each other in the Supers.

The Super winners knocks the field down to 8 which makes the WS in Oklahoma City, Home of USA Softball. 

Tell your GF good luck from all of us at MGoBlog and maybe, just maybe her team will be good enough to make the tourney and head to AA to play in our regional.

Alton

May 13th, 2011 at 8:57 AM ^

I think you mean "Bloomington" instead of "Columbus."

Even if UCLA or Washington isn't playing their regional at home, the regional will be at one of the 4 participating teams in that tournament.  The NCAA doesn't put regionals in neutral sites, and Ohio State won't be in the tournament.

It is quite likely that Washington or Oregon or even Stanford ends up as the #1 seed in a regional somewhere around here, but it would be a good #2 seed, like Indiana (or Notre Dame if they don't sneak up into the top 16), who is hosting the regional.

 

MGoSoftball

May 13th, 2011 at 12:53 PM ^

I was just using Columbus as an example but Bloomington is probably a better choice.  Indiana will likely get an invite as an at large team.   They deserve it for sure.

Now that there are upsets in the SEC tourney, it makes things interesting