Michigan Softball receives a #10 Nation Seed
Hosts regional Friday 20MAY11, we play Kentucky, ND and WMU. ESPNU will feature our regional on television. Our first game is Friday at 8pm
Our regional winner will travel to #7 California, Louisville, Jacksonville St., and Ill-Chicago regional at Louisville.
Arizona State receives the #1 seed vs #16 Texas A/M regional
#9 Oklahoma regional vs #8 Arizona regional
#5 Missouri regional vs #12 Washington Regional
#4 Florida regional vs #13 Oregon regional (at Penn St)
#3 Texas regional vs #14 Tennessee regional
#6 Georgia regional vs #11 Baylor regional (at Maryland)
#15 Stanford regional vs #2 Alabama regional
Surprises:
UCLA (ranked #12) is not seeded. They dropped some games late in the season so that hurt them.
Penn State is in as the host site with Oregon #13 being the seeded team.
Tennessee wins the SEC title but gets a #14 Seed
Maryland is the host site for #11 Baylor
Careful--if Michigan wins on Friday night, the second game will be Saturday at noon, not 2:30. We don't want people showing up at 2:30 Saturday and finding out that they missed the winners bracket game!
http://www.mgoblue.com/sports/w-softbl/spec-rel/051511aaa.html#tickets
It could have been worse. Kentucky swept Tennessee this year and took a few from Florida so they will not be easy. ND is better than last year but we should take them.
We will host the Supers because Cal cant host.
Absolutely furious. I have been looking forward to coming back home to catch the super-regional for months, and I get screwed out of that by the committee. Absolutely. Furious.
sit down and have a beer. According to ESPN, Cal cannot host a Super anyway. So if Cal wins, they will travel to whoever wins our regional.
If we win and someone other than Cal wins, we get to host because we have a higher seed.
ESPN did not say why Cal could not host. Per my previous post, I could not find out why.
So if we win our regional we WILL host the Super per ESPN. Come one home brother and I will buy the beer.
Ahh, this is good news! This is why I shouldn't comment after midnight when I'm running on 5 hours of sleep. :)
Well, in that case, let's crush that regional and get our well-deserved super-regional. And a beer definitely sounds like a good idea!
The one other thing in the tournament brackets worth commenting on is Penn State. Not just the inclusion of Penn State over Illinois and North Carolina, which is questionable enough, but the fact that this team, who must have been one of the last at large teams selected (along with Memphis), actually gets to host, a privilege which is generally reserved for the top teams in each region.
On a whim, I decided to look up the members of the tournament selection committee. Sure enough, Penn State's coach Robin Petrini is on the 10-member committee who selected the teams and determined the hosts. I'm not saying, I'm just saying.
If I were North Carolina (#41 in the RPI and ACC tournament runners up) or Illinois (#37 in the RPI and 3rd place in the Big Ten), I would be questioning the inclusion of Penn State (#46 in the RPI and 4th place in the Big Ten), and I would be asking some questions about how the committee handled these discussions.
From the ultimatecollegesoftball.com website:
Easiest and hardest Regionals for the #1 seed to advance.
Easiest
Tempe
Tuscaloosa
Gainesville
Columbia
Athens
Louisville
Tucson
Norman
Hardest
Austin
Ann Arbor
Knoxville
Palo Alto