Four C-USA Softball Teams Garner NCAA Regional Selections
May 11, 2008
IRVING, Texas - Four Conference USA Softball teams received postseason bids today when the NCAA Division I Softball Committee announced the 64-team NCAA Softball Championship field. Recently crowned C-USA Tournament champion UCF received the league's automatic bid, while regular season champion Houston, along with East Carolina and Tulsa received at-large bids. The four bids are the second-most in league history, trailing only the 2004 season when five teams were chosen. Houston, ranked as high as No. 9 in the latest national polls, earned the No. 8 national seed and will play host to the Houston regional from May 16-18 at Cougar Softball Stadium. This marks the first time in C-USA Softball history that a league team will host an NCAA Regional. The Cougars (50-9) are the region's No. 1 seed and will face off against No. 4 seed Delaware State (29-23) and 7:30 p.m. on Friday. The Hornets won the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference title and will be making its first NCAA Championship appearance. UCF learned it will face in-state rival South Florida in the opening round of the Gainesville Regional May 16 at 5 p.m. in Gainesville, Fla. Also appearing in the Gainesville Regional is host, and No. 1national seed, Florida and Georgia Tech. The Black and Gold is 1-8 all-time when facing the Bulls, securing its only win in 2006 behind a two-hit, 11-strikeout performance from Allison Kime. UCF's history with USF in the NCAA Tournament is storied, with the Bulls knocking the Knights out of the Gainesville Regional in 2005 after handing the Black and Gold both of its losses during the event The Knights enter the NCAA tournament with a 46-18 record on the season and need only one more win to match the program record for wins in a season set during the 2005 season, the first and only other year the Knights earned a bid into the NCAA Tournament East Carolina's bid also marks the first-ever at-large selection for the program and its second bid ever as it won an automatic spot in 1999 by winning the Big South Tournament. Head coach Tracey Kee's Pirates sport a 36-28 record and fell to Houston in the C-USA Tournament semifinals. ECU will face No. 16 Louisiana-Lafayette in the Baton Rouge Regional on Friday. Kee's teams have won 40 or more games in nine of the past 12 seasons and have tallied at least 50 in four of her years as head coach. In 2000, she directed the Pirates to 60 victories, just the 13th time in NCAA history that a team had reached that mark. In the fall of 2007, CSTV listed East Carolina as the eighth-winningest program in the NCAA as the Pirates have recorded 1,038 victories in just 22+ seasons. Kee has been part of 909 of those wins. Tulsa (34-23) will also be making just the second NCAA appearance in its program's history, the first since 2006 when it won the C-USA Championship and the league's automatic bid. TU will play Arkansas at 5 p.m. on Friday, May 16, at the OU Softball Complex in Norman. Oklahoma and Oregon will face off in the other first-round match-up on Friday. Tulsa ended the regular season by winning 13 of its final 17 games, before getting upset in the first round of the Conference USA Championship. The at-large selection is also a first for TU. Thirty conferences were awarded automatic qualification, and the remaining 34 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. The SEC led all conferences with eight teams in the championship, while the Pacific-10 placed seven. Six conferences tied for third with four bids to the tournament. California State University, Fresno, remains the only team to be selected to all 27 championships. Four teams are making their initial appearances in the tournament: Delaware State, Purdue, Stephen F. Austin and Stony Brook. Only eight schools have been crowned the NCAA Division I softball champion since the tournament started in 1982, and all are in this year's bracket. Houston Regional - May 16-18 at Houston, Texas Gainesville Regional - May 16-18 at Gainesville, Florida Baton Rouge Regional - May 16-18 at Baton Rouge, Louisiana Norman Regional - May 16-18 at Norman, Oklahoma * Indicates host institution CHAMPIONSHIP STRUCTURE The regional winners will advance to super regional competition for a best-of-three series May 23-24 (Memorial Day Weekend) at eight campus sites. The remaining eight teams will advance to the WCWS, an eight-team, double-elimination tournament. The championship final will be a best-of-three-series. The WCWS will be conducted May 29 to June 4 at the ASA Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma City. SELECTION PROCESS SEEDING, SITES
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