NCAA softball seeds and Mizzou destination...

Posted on: May 12, 2019 at 12:06:40 CT

Here is what seems to be a consensus on the national seeds who will be hosting home regionals.

Ok, UCLA, Wash, Arizona, Alabama, FSU are locks for 6 of the top 8 seeds, which will get home field thru the super regionals (if they keep winning). Before conference tourneys, the 4 teams in the mix for the last 2 top 8 seeds were: Florida, Texas, Minnesota, LSU. Florida is clearly in now after winning the SEC tourney. Texas is clearly out after going belly up in the Big 12 tourney, losing to Ok St and Iowa St and not even making the finals to get thrashed by OK. That leaves Minny and LSU. LSU looked like a lock for the last month, now has lost 5 straight games. Minny beat NW and lost to Michigan in the B1G tourney. LSU has the better metrics, a better SOS and 14 top 25 wins to Minnys 8. Doesn’t seem fair to ding them for losing to teams like Alabama and Florida in their last 4 games, the types of teams Minny never sees in the B1G. Flip a coin on these two for the #8 seed.

Then, Ok St, Tennessee, Kentucky, Michigan, Ole Miss should all get seeded, even though Michigan has a very weak 3 total wins over top 25 teams.

That leaves just 1 national seed, and 3 flawed contenders: Northwestern, James Madison, and Auburn. One of them, by default, will get the last seed. NW has only 2 top 25 wins, which in most every year would disqualify them. They have a woeful offense, and their facilities are so inadequate there is a question if they could host even if seeded. JM has only 4 top 25 wins, and has a SOS in the mid 40’s. Auburn has a top 20 SOS, plays in a far better conference, and has 7 top 25 wins. But they lost 10 of their last 11 SEC games in the regular season, before winning twice in the SEC tourney including a win over Tennessee. Will the selection committee hold their nose and seed Auburn despite they way they fell apart late in SEC play? Or reward NW or JM who play in far inferior conferences and have far fewer top 25 wins. Flip a coin on these teams too.

Where does Mizzou go? Anyone’s guess, although I still think the best option is for us to pray Northwestern gets seeded and we get sent to their regional. They are a light hitting team which is good because pitching is our biggest weakness. And while they have a great pitcher in freshman Danielle Williams (who was a Missouri commit), I’ve heard from people who have watched her that she is illegal on pretty much every pitch. Pitchers like that sometimes get a rude awakening in the NCAAs when umpires miraculously start enforcing the rules after ignoring them all year long.

If we don’t get placed in a NW regional, the options, with 6-7 SEC teams in line for seeds, aren’t promising. The next seed I think we might have a chance to upset would be Ok St, but Arky is almost certain to be the #2 seed in Stillwater. Very unlikely we would go to FSU, Minny, Texas, or Michigan, who all have #2 seeds within busing distance.

So I think it’s either Northwestern (if they get seeded), or one of 4 pretty awful destinations: OK, Arizona, UCLA, Washington. Frankly, in a balanced regional, one of those 4 places (all will be top 6 seeds) is where one of the lowest rated #2 seeds belongs. Which is us this year.