Norman, Ok May, 20 (The Oklahoma Post) –
The field of 64 was released for the college softball tournament on Sunday. The defending national champion, the Oklahoma Sooners, was selected as the number one overall seed for the third straight season.
The Sooners finished the regular season with an astonishing 49-2 record. They will host a regional and super-regional tournament if they make it there, along with the seven other top eight seeds, including the Oklahoma State Cowgirls softball team.
Sooner softball has been the top dog in softball for the past five years as they have been a mainstay in the Women’s College World Series and have won three out of the last five championships.
OU Softball has made it to the NCAA tourney 28 years straight and every year of Patty Gasso’s career. They have been a national seed for 15 straight years and will host a regional for the 11th consecutive year.
“I don’t think we look at ourselves as anything except a team that’s trying to play our best softball right now,” Gasso said. “So I mean, we’ve won the national championship as a 10-seed as a 1-seed. We’ve been all up and down the spectrum. said Patty Gasso during a zoom press conference.
Patty Gasso during a zoom press conference.
See the full bracket below.
The Sooners will have to go through three seed Texas A&M (29-26, 6-18 SEC), two seed Minnesota (26-24-1, 11-12 Big 10), and four seed Prairie View A&M (20-27, 16-8 SWAC) in Norman; if they want to keep their dream of back to back national titles alive.
Prairie View A&M
Oklahoma will start its path to the Women’s College World Series on Friday at 6:30 PM against Cinderella story and SWAC champion Prairie View A&M, who began the season 0-19 and came back to win the SWAC tournament. Yes, you heard that right, an 0-19 start to the season.
Minnesota
The two seed Gophers come out of the big ten after losing their last game in their conference tournament against Wisconsin. They played Oklahoma earlier in the season and were run-ruled by the Sooners 9-1 in five innings.
They also played two games against Oklahoma State, where they lost 7-6 in 10 innings and 7-0. All of these games were in Oklahoma, so they are no strangers to playing in the Sooner state.
Texas A&M
The three seed is the Aggies out of the SEC, they played a very tough schedule and pulled out wins over the number four and six national seeds, Alabama and Arkansas. They are no joke and can beat any team in the country, as they have already shown this year.
A&M is looking for some redemption after they had their season end last season in the Norman regional. They did not play the Sooners in the regional, but the last game their seniors played was on Marita-Hynes Field.
The one alarming thing when looking at the schedule for A&M is that their record in away games is 2-14, and they struggled toward the end of the year.
Tournament Format
The double-elimination tournament begins Friday, May 20th, where the one seed will play the four seed, and the two seed will play the three seed. The winners will then play each other in the first game on Saturday, where the winner of that will clinch their spot in the championship series on Sunday.
Immediately following the early game on Saturday, the losers of the Friday games will play each other. The loser of that game will have their season end, and the winner will move on to another elimination game to cap off Saturday night.
The winner of that Saturday night game will then move onto the championship series on Sunday, where they will play the team that is 2-0. The team that goes into it 2-0 will have to lose two games on Sunday to end their season but will only have to win one.
The regional winner will then play the winner of the Orlando regional, where the 16 overall seed UCF is hosting Michigan, South Dakota State, and Villanova.
The winner of each regional will face off in a best two out of three series at the higher-seeded team’s field, where the winner of that will move onto the Women’s College World Series.
In-state rival the Oklahoma State Cowgirls will also host a regional in Stillwater as they host North Texas, Fordham, and Nebraska. They will look to continue their road to the WCWS as they are riding hot after defeating the Sooners in the Big 12 Championship in their last game.
If you want to see the Sooners season more in-depth or the national player of the year finalist you can read my articles here.
For more information on OU softball and the rest of the postseason, visit the Oklahoma Softball website or the official NCAA Softball website.
(Writing by Austin DeSpain; Editing by Robbie Robertson)
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