SB Remains #4 This Week
The Softball Team remained #4 in all three polls (RPI, Coaches, USA Softball) this week despite losing to Minny on Friday night.
The Top 8 RPI rankings are: 1) Florida 2) LSU, 3) Auburn, 4) Michigan, 5) Florida State, 6) Oregon, 7) Alabama and 8) Mizzou. The only surprise in the Top 16 is Kansas (32-5) at #14. The rest of the Top 16 is the usual suspects.
LSU is #1 in both the Coaches and USA Softball Polls while Florida is #3 in both polls. The RPI is the best predictor of the World Series seedings.
Other Big Ten Teams: Minny is #19, MW is #27, OSU jumped up to #50 and Nebraska is #55.
We take on Eastern tonight at 6pm at Alumni Field. It looks like the rain will pass and the game should be played. We then travel to Rutgers this weekend.
Is it surprising that we are still at #4 despite the conference losses?
Could provide a link to the RPI rankings?
I just went to the Oregon UCLA game, which UCLA touted as #1 vs. #8. I now see they meant in the Pac-12.
We can play with anyone in the country. A natty in softball isn't to far fetched.
The last coupled times we weathered losses to retain our high ranking I was a little surprised; this time, not so much. Minnesota is a very good team - arguably under-rated by the national pollsters - and taking 2 of 3 from them on the road marks an impressive weekend. True, the first game was ugly for us, but we returned the favor in the third game to balance things out.
Before the series, Hutch said this would be basically a super-regional sort of feel, and I don't think she was exaggerating. The stakes were really high (Big Ten standings, national rankings, post-season seeding/hosting all on the line), and both teams were playing to win. Minnesota controlled the first 8 innings or so, but then the tide turned in a big way. Good job by Michigan doing what needed to be done. The rest of the way it's fairly weak teams, so we'll need to be almost flawless - the KSU & Iowa losses did chew up some of our margin for error.
how much separation is there from Michigan to Florida? Also what are the odds that we win the Big Ten thus year/
Michigan is only I would say about a half-step behind Florida right now. We played them very close both times this year, but gave it up late. Softball is a sport with pretty good parity these days - not so much like women's b-ball where the same 2-3 teams always seem to be in the Final Four.
As for the Big Ten, our chances are good, but it's not locked up by any means. Right now Northwestern is in the lead, but they have a couple very tough series ahead. Minnesota is likely our most serious competition, and we're ahead of them by a nose. If we take care of business, we've got a great chance, but we can't afford any slip-ups really.