WAC Tournament Champion Fresno State and No. 12 Hawai`i both advanced to NCAA Softball Regionals. After the WAC Tournment in Fresno, both teams will remain in California for Regionals. The Bulldogs will play in the Stanford Region, along with LSU, Stanford and Cal State Northridge. Hawai`i received an at-large bid and will be going to Los Angeles, Calif. for the NCAA Regionals.
NCAA Softball Bracket
A combination of Fresno State players watched from various restaurants and player's houses for the selection, which takes them away from Bulldog Diamond for the first time since 2004. LSU earned the No. 10 ranking, with Stanford hosting the four-team regional. LSU will be the No. 1 seed and will face No. 4 Cal State Northridge on Thursday, followed by No. 2 Stanford facing No. 3 Fresno State.
Sunday's NCAA Tournament berth is Fresno State's 26th straight appearance, and it is the only school in the nation to have played in every NCAA Tournament.
The Regional will be held Thursday, Friday and Saturday at Stanford, only one of two regional sites hosting Thursday through Saturday. The rest of the field will be playing Friday through Sunday. Fresno State will face Stanford at 6 p.m., with LSU and Northridge facing each other at 3 p.m. The regional is double elimination, with the winning team advancing to the super regionals the following week. Fresno State hosted the 2005 and 2006 regional at Bulldog Diamond and the last time it wasn't at home the Bulldogs were at Stanford in 2004.
For Hawai`i this is the seventh time they will be going to the NCAA Regionals. It is the first time they're going since 2003, when they also won their last WAC title.
The WAC regular season champions, Hawai`i will face UC Santa Barbara on Friday, May 18. The host team, UCLA will be playing Loyola Marymount.
For head coach Bob Coolen, this will be his seventh trip to post-season play. He is the only coach in Hawai`i softball history to take teams to the NCAA tournament.
Twenty-nine conferences were awarded automatic qualification, and the remaining 35 slots were filled with at-large selections to complete the bracket. The top 16 teams were seeded nationally and will play at campus sites this weekend.
Team pairings were determined by geographical proximity, with the exception that teams from the same conference were not paired during regional competition, when possible.
Tucson Regional - May 18-20 at Tucson, Arizona
*No. 1 seed Arizona (39-12-1) vs. N.C. A&T/ Howard
Pacific (34-22) vs. Mississippi St. (34-25)
Columbus Regional - May 18-20 at Columbus, Ohio
*Ohio St. (38-16) vs. Canisius (27-19)
Cal St. Fullerton (34-20) vs. No. 16 seed Virginia Tech (47-14)
Ann Arbor Regional - May 18-20 at Ann Arbor, Michigan
*No. 9 seed Michigan (43-11) vs. Eastern Mich. (27-20)
Louisville (36-23) vs. Oregon St. (39-21)
Hempstead Regional - May 18-20 at Hempstead, New York
*Hofstra (40-13) vs. Harvard (31-13)
Albany (N.Y.) (33-15) vs. No. 8 seed Baylor (45-13)
Knoxville Regional - May 18-20 at Knoxville, Tennessee
No. 5 seed Tennessee (54-5) vs. Furman (21-34-1)
Winthrop (48-16) vs. North Carolina (45-19)
Los Angeles Regional - May 18-20 at Los Angeles, California
Hawai`i (46-11) vs. UC Santa Barb. (30-21)
Loyola Marymount (45-16) vs. *No. 12 seed UCLA (36-16)
Gainesville Regional - May 18-20 at Gainesville, Florida
*No. 13 seed Florida (46-20) vs. Stetson (44-20)
Texas (33-18) vs. Georgia Tech (53-13)
College Station Regional - May 18-20 at College Station ,Texas
Houston (42-16) vs. La.- Lafayette (46-16)
Sam Houston St. (37-24) vs. *No. 4 seed Texas A&M (40-10)
Amherst Regional - May 18-20 at Amherst, Massachusetts
No. 3 seed Oklahoma (52-6) vs. Colgate (25-22)
Long Island (33-20) vs. *Massachusetts (37-12-1)
Carbondale Regional - May 18-20 at Carbondale, Illinois
Missouri (38-22) vs. *Southern Ill. (40-14)
Mississippi Valley (29-26) vs. No. 14 seed DePaul (41-11)
Tuscaloosa Regional - May 18-20 at Tuscaloosa, Alabama
*No. 11 seed Alabama (51-7) vs. Tennessee Tech (48-17)
California (33-30) vs. Florida St. (44-23)
Lincoln Regional - May 18-20 at Lincoln, Nebraska
*Nebraska (37-18) vs. Georgia (43-26)
Creighton (39-12-1) vs. No. 6 seed Washington (35-16)
Provo Regional - May 17-19 at Provo, Utah
No. 7 seed Arizona St. (49-15) vs. Southern Utah (29-29)
*Brigham Young (41-18) vs. Cal Poly (39-15)
Palo Alto Regional - May 17-19 at Palo Alto, California
*Stanford (33-19-1) vs. Fresno State (46-16)
Cal St. Northridge (23-21) vs. No. 10 seed LSU (52-10)
Columbia Regional - May 18-20 at Columbia, South Carolina
No. 15 seed North Carolina St. (41-19) vs. *South Carolina (34-23)
Penn St. (26-23) vs. Oregon (42-17)
Evanston Regional - May 18-20 at Evanston, Illinois
Illinois St. (42-15-1) vs. Notre Dame (31-22)
Wright St. (25-33) vs. *No. 2 seed Northwestern (45-11)
*Host