MICHIGAN #8 Seed in NCAA Tourney
1. Oklahoma
2. Florida
3. Oregon
4. Texas
5. Arizona St.
6. Missouri
7. Tennessee
8. Michigan (Valpo with Head Coach Jordan Stevens from Marysville Michigan, CMU and Cal).
The NCAA Softball Tournament pairings are released tonight. We had a bad loss against the ultimate Big Ten Tournament winner, Wiskey, in the Semis. It will be interesting to see if we drop out of the top 8.
The NCAA selects 64 teams. The top 16 get to host the Regionals. Each Regional host site will be assigned 3 additional teams primarily based on geography although not in all cases. Each team will be seeded 1-4 in the Region based on their overall RPI ranking.
Each Regional Host is seeded 1-16, so the #1 seed will play the #16 seed provided each wins their Regional. The higher seed is the host site for the Super Regional. Both the Regional and Super Regional are double elimination formats.
that IPFW has to go to Louisville. AA would have been better travel-wise anyway.
I didn't know IPFW was that good at softball and I live 20 minutes from Fort Wayne lol.
Hmmm, pretty solid. I guess I'm kinda partial for them since my aunt "played" for them.
They're a good team (though not without their issues) with all but two returning from last year's 45 win team that was one game away from the tournament. They have two very good pitchers by Summit League standards, a solid slapping corps and two girls with a lot of power.
I like the Louisville matchup a lot better than a hypothetical Michigan matchup, and if the pitching comes to play they can stay in a game with Louisville, UCLA or UAB. Headed down to Louisville for the first time this Friday, and I'm probably more excited than I would be for any other sporting event, Rose Bowl and a Stanley Cup final included.
Is it on tv anywhere? B1G Network?
...awkward
So (theoretical) super regional in Ann Arbor right?
#8 overall seed - get to host both the regional and super regionals
LSU is #9 overall, would matchup with their regions winner in super regionals
bracket for us. Cal is going to be tough but we can beat LSU if we get there.
to my prediction of Michigan and Oklahoma in the finals this year.
Am I the only one that abbreviates Wisconsin as "Wisco" and shutters every time someone writes "Wisky" or "Wiskey" or something of the nature?
/off-topic
Can't wait to get down to Alumni Field!
How does the super regional work? Is it a double elimination with the 16 winners of the original regionals or is it something else?
best 2 of 3 for the winners of the 16 Regionals. This will eliminate 8 teams with 8 teams remaining for the WS.
Ok, then it's just single elimination with the remaining 8 teams?
There are 2 brackets of 4 teams playing double elimination. Each bracket has a winner then the winners play the best 2 of 3.
Super Regionals are best of 3. The higher seed hosts unless they lose their regional. So UM would host LSU if both teams prevail in their regionals. If UM doesn't win, LSU would host the winner of the Michigan regional.
Last year, Hofstra and South Florida both upset the regional hosts (UCLA & Florida respectively) and South Florida hosted the super-regional and ended up advancing to the College World Series.
some crazy softball last year. Dont count out Hofstra this year either. They are really good.
My quick picks based on my limeted knowledge:
Cinderella(unseeded to WCWS): Georgia
Seeded team to lose first: LSU
FInals: Oklahoma vs. Oregon
EDIT: What is Jolene Henderson's status for the regional? This greatly affects our chances to advance.
I'm feeling a WCWS appearance this year. It's been too long.
Cal is one of the 1 pitcher teams in the tournament. Others are A&M, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Hofstra, and Baylor. Frankly, Minnesota and Wisconsin could also be classified that way.
Henderson was injured and hasn't played much for several weeks. She finally won in their last game of the season:
http://www.calbears.com/sports/w-softbl/recaps/051113aad.html
She pitched earlier this weekend and got the loss - giving up several runs in the first inning.
UM needs to worry about their own pitching, hitting, defense. We don't want to sneak into the Super regional.
We cannot worry about other teams. If we play solid defense, get those timely hits and Sara/Haylie keeps us in the game, we are off to Oklahoma City.
Do they re-seed the #1-8 teams in the CWS (assuming there are a few upsets) or are we locked into playing Oklahoma if we advance?
They don't re-seed, so if Michigan and Oklahoma both advance to Oklahoma City, they will play each other in the first round.
There is a twist in how they do the double elimination brackets compared to the men's CWS, so two teams from the same half of the bracket could end up meeting again in the finals. For example, if Michigan advances but loses to Oklahoma, they could still end up working their way back through the brackets and could possibly end up playing Oklahoma again in the best-of-three finals (if Oklahoma has certain results as well), and the result of the earlier game between the two teams would be erased.
Well, we were in the same pod last year, and then ended up not having to play, which made my life easier.
Can't dodge it again! :/
Cal is a good team, but Valpo is pretty much terrible (one of Detroit's five wins was Valpo) and CMU is a generic MAC tournament champion that Michigan already beat 11-0 earlier this season.
It's an interesting regional; California might be the best team outside of the top 16: they were #17 in RPI going in to last week, and would probably have been in the top 16 if their #1 pitcher had been healthy the entire season.
On the other hand, Valparaiso and Central Michigan should by all rights both be #4 seeds. Neither of them is in the top 100 in RPI. I assume that the NCAA assigned a very very weak #3 seed because they had assigned a very strong #2 seed.
It all depends on how you measure the toughness of a regional. It is probably one of the toughest in terms of the likelihood of the top seed to advance, but it is just about the easiest in terms of the likelihood of the 3-seed or the 4-seed to advance.
That's how I was looking at it, and I think that's the right way to look at a regional. If the question had been "is this a tough regional for Michigan" then I would completely agree about Cal being the most important factor.
Henderson is healthy now, by all accounts, and will be a really tough draw. She gave an interview last year that will stick with me for a long time, funny stuff.
anything can happen: a bad call, a lucky bounce, a wild pitch or a rain delay. Thankfully it is a double elimination bracket which should even out any lucky team.
The chance of a team coming out of the losers bracket to win it is about 15% overall.