The 2018 NCAA Softball Tournament got underway with a weekend full of softball. The field of 64 was reduced to 16 after the double-elimination regional round that saw seeds dominate — taking 50 of their 53 games. All the major players are still alive. Here’s what we saw:
Oklahoma Starts Three-Peat Quest with Flying Start
The Sooners lost their opening game and were down to their final three outs in an elimination game during the regionals of the national title run last season.
There were no such issues this year. No. 4 Oklahoma earned two run-rule victories and posted shutouts in all three wins to reach super regionals for the ninth straight year.
Paige Parker pitched four innings in each of her two outings, separated by a minor car accident that kept her in the dugout for her team’s second game against Tulsa. Paige Lowary was the only other player to see action in the circle for the Sooners, pitching just under four innings in relief and earning her second complete-game of the season in a six-inning win against the Golden Hurricane.
The Parker-Lowary duo is firing and the offense is virtually untouched from 2017, losing just the seventh-best batter in its order. The Sooners addition to the lineup, freshman Jocelyn Alo, added two home runs over the weekend to make her nation’s best total 26 dingers.
The tests get tougher deeper in the postseason, but the two-time defending national champions don’t look like they’re relinquishing their title easy.
South Carolina Avoids Early Exit
All 16 seeds advanced to the super regionals for the second consecutive year. No. 3 UCLA, and No. 11 LSU both faced at least one elimination game, but neither came as close to the end of its season as the ninth-seeded Gamecocks.
Down to its final out against Hofstra after a loss earlier in the day to Liberty, South Carolina received an extra day of softball thanks to a walk-off from senior Krystan White.
“One thing we’ve really done well is we’ve had a short memory,” South Carolina head coach Beverly Smith said after her team’s win over the Pride. “I think sometimes we as coaches hold on to the losses a lot longer than our players do. We went into the locker room, kind of hashed it out, and honestly flushed it.”
Short memory served well in the team’s next pair of elimination games. The Gamecocks avenged Saturday’s defeat to the Flames with two wins over them on Sunday to advance to the team’s super regional since 2007.
No. 8 Arizona State awaits, but teams that have faced elimination in the regionals have fared well in the supers. All three — Florida, Oklahoma, and LSU — that were forced to go the distance in regionals last season reached the College World Series and won at least one game in Oklahoma City, with the Sooners and Gators making it to the championship series.
Kelly Barnhill Solid in Pursuit of First National Title
Some of softball’s greatest pitchers never claimed an NCAA title. Michele Smith, Cat Osterman, and Monica Abbott all fell short by the end of their college careers.
Barnhill pitched just a single inning for the Gators’ loaded staff during their 2016 NCAA Tournament run that ended with a surprising super-regional exit for the top seed. 2017 saw the sophomore rise to become Florida’s ace, and college softball’s best player as USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year. Still, the Gators couldn’t get the job done in the championship series against Oklahoma.
To open the 2018 NCAA Tournament, Barnhill conceded just a single earned run in two run-rule victories, pitching 8.1 innings. Florida swept through the weekend with three wins.
No. 2 Florida faces No. 15 Texas A&M in the super regionals. The Gators may not be the outright favorites as they have been the past two seasons, but the SEC champions have lost just one of their last 20 games; 10 of those wins came against opponents that have made it to this season’s super regionals.
SEC and PAC-12’s 14 Seeds Work to End Oklahoma’s Dynasty
Of the 16 teams heading to super regionals this weekend, just two come from outside the SEC or PAC-12. It’s no secret that these have been the best two conference’s in college softball during the past decade, but what will it take for one of the 14 teams to dethrone the Sooners.
Only Florida and Oklahoma have claimed national titles in the past five seasons. the PAC-12 hasn’t had a national champion since Arizona State in 2011. Oregon, which has the nation’s best team ERA at 1.06 earned runs per game, has the chance to end that drought, but the top seeds face a hot-hitting Kentucky team this weekend. Outside of the Gators, none of the SEC’s eight other seeded teams are in the top six, so it may be a tough ask to see the conference’s first champion other than Florida since Alabama in 2012.
The PAC-12’s UCLA and Washington round out the top five, but the Bruins escaped an early exit against Cal State Fullerton in regionals and face a tougher test against No. 14 Arizona this weekend, while the Huskies recovering from a rough end to the season — losing six of their last 12. If neither the PAC-12 or SEC can take down Oklahoma, the ACC might get its first champion in No. 6 Florida State, which cruised through regionals with dominant wins over Jacksonville State and an extra-innings victory over Auburn.
Inside Softball 