What went down in the 13th week of NCAA softball? The aim each week is to bring you five stories that defined the week in college softball or help navigate the road to Oklahoma City and the Women's College World Series.
Oregon brings Florida State back to earth
For a team that was dethroned after four seasons as Pac-12 champion, Oregon sure looked capable of winning as many games as necessary in Oklahoma City come June.
For a team that had more losses than wins for the week, so did Florida State.
Unbeaten through the season's first two months, Oregon climbed to the No. 1 ranking. It won back-to-back games at Missouri. It won the only two games played in a series at Utah. It beat Kentucky and BYU. But with only a series at Pac-12 cellar-dweller Stanford remaining, Oregon also has lost series against Arizona, UCLA and Washington in recent weeks -- the caliber of teams it would most likely face in the World Series.
Sweeping Florida State changes that, in no way better illustrated than freshman Maggie Balint pitching a gem Saturday to clinch the series.
During an in-game interview on the Pac-12 Network during Sunday's finale, Balint talked about having struggled of late mentally and with her command of the strike zone. Those struggles may be relative to her own high expectations, considering she has only allowed 18 earned runs in 111 2/3 innings, but it matters if she felt that way. With due respect to Stanford next week, it's far more useful to Balint to enter the postseason with success against one of the best teams in the country fresh in her mind.
Later in Sunday's game, Balint worked out of a jam after entering the game with two runners on base and Florida State's Alex Powers at the plate. Her work in relief of effective fellow freshman Miranda Elish kept the Seminoles in check long enough for Gwen Svekis to drive in the winner.
Yet Florida State was hardly exposed. Damage was admittedly done to its NCAA tournament seed, but the only real long-term worry is an apparent hand injury that forced catcher Sydney Broderick out of the finale. The opening run-rule loss notwithstanding, the Seminoles played their final 16 innings in Eugene on level footing. They played well enough to win a game of that magnitude on another day. On Wednesday, they did, a 3-1 win for the ages against Florida on an 11th-inning walk-off home run from Powers against potential player of the year Kelly Barnhill.
In a season without a favorite, Florida State and Oregon showed this week why they are on the short list of contenders.
UCLA wins the series; Arizona wins the conference
Jessie Harper wasn't even 10 years old the last time Arizona won the Pac-12 title.
Let that sink in, perhaps for a little longer than the brief seconds it took Harper's grand slam to sail deep over the fence at UCLA's Easton Stadium in the first inning of Sunday's series finale between the two most accomplished college programs in the history of the sport. Harper's home run broke a weekend-long scoring drought for the Wildcats and ultimately proved the decisive hit in a 7-2 win, the one game Arizona had to win in order to clinch the title with a week to spare.
When last the Wildcats won the league, in 2007, the SEC hadn't won a national championship, Utah was still in the Mountain West and Mike Candrea had yet to coach then-NCAA single-season home run record holder Stacey Nuveman for the final time in an Olympic game. So some things have changed. It's not as if the program fell off the map -- it played for the national title in 2010, after all -- but five Pac-12 programs won at least one conference title in the interim.
First in the nation in slugging percentage and second in scoring entering the UCLA series in which it was shut out for just the second and third times all season, Arizona also arrived in Los Angeles third nationally in ERA. That will suffer some after the Bruins scored 16 runs, nearly 20 percent of the total runs allowed by Arizona this season, but the upcoming week off should be almost as welcome in Tucson as the league crown. Not only will ace Danielle O'Toole enter the postseason with fewer than 200 innings, she'll do so on at least 11 days of rest.
More than a title to play for in SEC tournament
It's going to be a good show, 11 games in four days in a beautiful venue, but the identity of the team left standing in this week's SEC tournament in Knoxville, Tennessee, matters less than what many of those involved can still do to enhance their NCAA tournament standing.
It isn't a matter of getting in. All 12 teams that qualified for the SEC event will also be in the NCAA bracket, barring the unprecedented from the selection committee. Even Georgia, which didn't qualify for the SEC tournament after a last-place finish, is a good bet to make the NCAA field. And precisely because every game in Knoxville is a good résumé win, opportunity abounds.
After losing the series to archrival Auburn but gaining some emotional momentum from Demi Turner's return to the field in even a limited capacity, Alabama would like to solidify its case to stay home for a regional, as it has in every season of the super regional era. And fresh off a series win at Missouri, Mississippi is making a late push for an NCAA seed and a regional. Kentucky could help shore up its cause for the same after it lost two of three against Mississippi State.
The stakes are even higher for Tennessee and Texas A&M, ranked eighth and ninth, respectively, in the NCAA selection committee's most recent top 10. That, of course, would be the difference between hosting or traveling in a super regional. Tennessee helped its cause still more with a win Sunday to clinch a three-game series against Texas A&M, largely thanks to Meghan Gregg driving in five runs to outlast a three-home run, six-RBI day from the Aggies' Tori Vidales.
Oregon State plays itself (almost) in
For all the headlines made by teams near the top of the Pac-12 standings, arguably no team in that conference or any other made better use of its week than Oregon State. The Beavers aren't home safe when it comes to the NCAA tournament, but the path looks far more manageable after a series win against Utah and three wins in four games overall on the week.
Oregon State had two things working against its at-large credentials when the week began. At 24-22 with seven games to play, including the three-game series against Utah, a winning record wasn't guaranteed. One problem solved. Despite a loss on Sunday, the Beavers are assured of being eligible for the postseason. The thornier problem was Oregon State's RPI standing, No. 49 before a midweek win against Portland State and two wins against Utah.
The tournament math is historically simple. Enter the selection process in the RPI top 40 and almost always get in. Enter the selection process outside the top 40 and start sweating. It is why this was also a good week for teams like Ohio State, No. 43 in the most recent RPI before two wins at Illinois, and a painful one for the likes of Pitt, No. 48 before two losses at Georgia Tech.
But behind three complete-game wins in four days from Taylor Cotton, games in which she allowed just six hits and one earned run, Oregon State made the week count more than most.
Texas State unwittingly creates championship week drama
Texas State would have preferred the Sun Belt tournament matter a little less. Entering this past week, the Bobcats trailed Louisiana-Lafayette in the conference standings but were positioned nicely for an NCAA tournament at-large bid with a top-30 RPI. Then they lost two out of three to Texas-Arlington, the last a soul-crusher in which Arlington scored three runs to tie the game in the bottom of the seventh and won on a two-out, walk-off hit in the 10th inning.
So not only is Louisiana-Lafayette making one last case, via the Sun Belt tournament, to host an NCAA regional, but Texas State, with a scarcity of top-50 wins, is playing for its postseason life.
It is far from the only example of a smaller tournament with big-time stakes.
Atlantic Coast: Granted, the ACC isn't a small league, but its postseason fortunes look shaky beyond juggernaut Florida State. That's a shame because an NCAA tournament without Louisville's Maryssa Becker, Notre Dame's Wester sisters, North Carolina's Kendra Lynch and Brittany Pickett or Syracuse's Sydney O'Hara would be a lesser event. The Tar Heels and Fighting Irish have the best résumés, but all except the Seminoles have work to do.
Conference USA: Marshall enters as the top seed and favorite in a tournament that is a headache-inducing mix of single- and double-elimination. It likely has the résumé to make the NCAA tournament regardless (only James Madison, BYU and Louisiana-Lafayette have better RPIs among teams outside the major conferences), but that means an upset takes away an at-large bid elsewhere. Both Florida Atlantic and Florida International are capable of doing that.
Ohio Valley: Every SEC team within driving range of top seed Jacksonville State will be quietly rooting for an upset. None of those teams would be eager to face the pitching combo of Whitney Gillespie and Taylor West in a regional, although Jacksonville State has at least a chance of an at-large bid. That probably isn't true of SIU-Edwardsville, but an OVC title game pitting SIUE's Haley Chambers-Book against Gillespie would be one of the entire week's best games.