Arizona Women's Softball Team seeks 9th National Championship - A Proud Alumni

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When you have something good to talk about, then talk about it.  My college, the University of Arizona in Tucson, gives one many reasons for having a little pride not the least of which is the amazing accomplishments of the Women's Softball team.

Arizona has won eight NCAA national championships, second only to fellow conference member UCLA. Speaking of conference, the PAC 12 continues to be the dominate conference with an incredible five teams in the top 11 tournament rankings.

Besides Arizona as the number two national seed, other PAC 12 seeds include Oregon No. 3, UCLA No. 5, Washington No.6, and Utah No. 11.  All are hosts teams for the first rounds.  Arizona won the conference championship against the best competition in the nation.

In the trivia column the Wildcats will be playing in their 31st consecutive NCAA championship, more than any other school in history.  Arizona coach Mike Candrea, the most successful softball coach in Arizona history, was a graduate of Arizona's bitter instate rival the ASU Sub Devils.

Two Arizona players out of ten nationwide are nominated for the most prestigious award in women's softball, the NCAA Player of the Year.

Katiyana Mauga broke the career home run record for the Wildcats.

Danielle O'Toole, star pitcher led the nation in wins the past two seasons.

Add to that freshman Jessie Harper winning other honors and you have one celebrated bunch.

Here is what SB Nation had to say about the Cats.

    

NCAA Softball Tournament bracket: Arizona hosts New Mexico State, St. Francis (PA), and South Carolina

The road to OKC goes through Tucson

by Jason Bartel  May 14, 2017, 7:35pm PDT

For the 31st consecutive season, the Arizona Wildcats are in the NCAA Softball Tournament.
This wasn’t a question heading into Sunday night since Arizona had clinched an auto-bid with its first Pac-12 title since 2007, but the question really was would they be a national seed and be guaranteed to stay in Tucson the first two weekends?

Well, they are a national seed — No. 2 to be exact — and will have the opportunity to host a Super Regional for the first time since 2011 assuming they can get through the first weekend.
The No. 2 national seed is the highest Arizona is ranked in the tournament since 2007, which happens to be the same year as the program’s most recent National Championship.

The Wildcats, who have a 48-7 overall record this year (18-6 Pac-12), will welcome New Mexico State, St. Francis (PA), and South Carolina to Tucson this coming weekend.

Tucson Regional:
South Carolina vs. Saint Francis (PA)
New Mexico State vs. Arizona

10:28 PM - 14 May 2017

The Regional round is a four-team, double elimination pool. Arizona will play NMSU first, and then progress from there throughout the weekend. The first game for U of A will begin at approximately 6:30 PM PT and will be broadcast on ESPNU.

The Super Regional round is still a best-of-three format, but will take place over three days instead of the customary two days in the softball tournament.

If Arizona does indeed win its regional, they would play the winner of the Waco Regional, which includes Baylor, Kent State, Oregon State, and James Madison.


In other Pac-12 news, Oregon is the No. 3 national seed, while UCLA is the No. 5 seed. Washington is the No. 6 seed and Utah is the No. 11 seed, making it five different Pac-12 host sites. ASU will travel to the Oxford Regional to potentially face Ole Miss. Former Wildcat Taryne Mowatt is on the Rebels’ coaching staff. Cal will travel to Auburn.
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'College GameDay' a major coup for Cats - as in University of Arizona

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Publisher's note - Arizona is my alma mater...

If your school is selected to host ESPN’s “College GameDay”, it’s like somebody scheduled a parade and everybody you know is going to be there.

About two million people climb out of bed every Saturday morning to watch the show and it almost never disappoints. It’s Army-Navy, Kansas-Missouri and in 2001, 2001, 2008 and 2009 it was Texas-Oklahoma in the Red River Rivalry.

Eleven hours before Saturday’s Arizona-UCLA kickoff, GameDay will be live on the UA mall.

“It’s cool,” said UA junior nose tackle Sani Fuimaono. “It’s what I used to wake up to watch when I was in high school.”

GameDay goes beyond cool. What’s a good word? Nirvana. It’s got to have a little music to it.

GameDay used to be snooty. It used to be Alabama-Auburn and Nebraska-Notre Dame, and an excessive diet of Wolverines, Volunteers and Buckeyes.

But over the last 15 years, GameDay has become monument to all the people of college football. It has given us Harvard-Penn, Army-Navy, Southern-Grambling and, believe it or not, North Dakota State-Incarnate Word.

The NDSU Bison hosted GameDay twice. That’s one more time than Arizona State, whose lone appearance as a host was in 2005. (The Sun Devils lost to No. 1 USC, 38-28).

“It’s gonna be big,” Arizona coach Rich Rodriguez said Monday. “I’m tickled to death they are here.”

GameDay was once the center of all “East coast bias” in college sports. Its first 24 locations were so far from the Pac-12 that when it finally erected a stage for the November 1998 Oregon-at-UCLA game — its first game at a Pac-12 venue — that the crew looked around Pasadena and realized “hey, this is where they play the Rose Bowl!”

But until Pete Carroll turned USC into a powerhouse, GameDay went 49 consecutive shows, from early 2001 to late 2004 — without a Pac-12 host.

All of that has changed. USC has since been host to 10 GameDay shows; Oregon eight.

Arizona and Stanford have twice been hosts. No other Pac-12 school has had more than one hosting role; Washington State and Cal have none.

“Just to show off our campus and the city of Tucson; it’s all positive,” RichRod said.

ESPN won’t divulge the identity of GameDay’s much-anticipated “guest picker” until Saturday.

In 2009, when Arizona lost 44-41 to Oregon in its Tucson GameDay debut, the guest picker was Olympic swimming gold medalist Amanda Beard. She was underwhelming, to put it politely.

Perhaps this time GameDay will fly Arizona alumnus Bob Baffert in from a California race track. Or maybe Steve Kerr can squeeze in a visit before the Golden State Warriors open training camp. They would fit nicely with the list of guest-picking celebrities that have ranged from Ken Griffey Jr., father of UA receiver Trey Griffey to Alice Cooper and Bubba Watson.

The appeal of GameDay is now part of America’s football fabric. This is Year 23, but ESPN didn’t always have such a willing audience.

When ESPN decided to televise the 100th meeting between Division III football rivals Amherst and Williams, the Lord Jeffs against the Ephs, the Amherst administration of 1985 balked.

They left the decision to football coach Jim Ostendarp, who famously said “we’re in the education business, not the entertainment business.”

You almost expected a poetry reading.

Twenty-two years later, the Ephs and Lord Jeffs met again, a showdown for the 2007 Little Three championship, and when ESPN’s GameDay crew erected a stage three days in advance, the population of Williamstown grew and grew and grew, from 2,500 to almost 14,000.

People camped on every available plot of grass near the Massachusetts-Vermont border.

When the ESPN people flipped the switch early Saturday morning, downtown Williamstown was transformed into a mobile fraternity party. Dozens of people dressed in purple cow costumes (the Eph mascot is a purple cow). Others held signs that said “FEAR THE COW” and “AMWORST MUST GO.”

On Saturday morning at the UA mall, scores of bleary-eyed Wildcat fans will sway behind the GameDay stage. If you’re going to be part of the crowd, jot down these words and put them on a red and blue sign:

PLEASE COME BACK

ESPN News

The original wildcat mascot arrived on campus October 17, 1915, and was introduced to the student body the following day at assembly in Herring Hall.

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Pythagoras & Aristotle Report on March Madness - How peculiar those Americans - The Sweet Sixteen

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Enough from the sports analysts, arm chair point guards, loud mouth fanatics, news and entertainment personalities, geeks and computers, after two or three rounds, the first of many odd math facts attached to March Madness, we have sixteen teams left.

The bracket says three rounds were played but reality says we went from 64 to 32 teams (1st round), then 32 to 16 teams (2nd round).  My math says two rounds.  We have left 16 to 8 (3rd round), 8 to 4 (4th round), 4 to 2 (5th round), and the championship (6th round).  Since when did a play in by a couple of teams constitute a tournament round?

Clearly, no one involved in the billion dollar March Madness money machine worries about details like accuracy, math, or specifics, just the bottom line.  Well the bottom line started out with Kentucky the favorite and after two or three rounds, nothing has changed.

The first rounds destroyed the East coast, or specifically the Northeast, as a perennial powerhouse of teams which seems a logical shift, but that is part of the analysis to come.

For insights free of the often-hysterical outbursts by all our specialists, I have channeled Pythagoras, ancient Greek mathematician, and Aristotle, ancient Greek philosopher, to get their analysis of what is going on.

First, they offered as background a review of the definition of "Madness", as used in the made-for-TV phrase March Madness.  Does the term "Madness" contribute to the branding of the NCAA championship?

Here is their composite definition:

mad·ness

noun

Madness

The definition of madness:

1. insanity, mental illness, dementia, derangement, lunacy, instability

2. folly, foolishness, idiocy, stupidity, insanity, lunacy, silliness 

3. frenzied or chaotic activity

The synonyms for various states of madness:

1. mania, psychosis,

2. craziness

3. bedlam, mayhem, chaos, pandemonium, craziness, uproar, turmoil, disorder, all hell broken loose, (three-ring) circus

According to my learned ancients, it would appear the term indeed describes the state of chaos resulting from March Madness.

Pythagoras was most interested in the mathematical puzzles, assumptions, thesis and hypothesis involved in seeding, results, conferences, and all the other trivia associated with the payoffs.  Some of his observations included conference power rating, note the numbers represent the conference standings of the tournament teams, not the NCAA seedings.

So far through the first two or three rounds here are conference results.

Atlantic Coast Conference

Conference champion (1) Virginia lost

(2) Duke, (3) Notre Dame, (4) Louisville, (5) North Carolina, (7) North Carolina State won

Pac 12

One team lost

(1) Arizona, (2) Utah, and (4) UCLA won

Big East

Top five teams lost

Only (6) Xavier remains

Big Ten

Five teams lost

(1) Wisconsin and (3) Michigan State remain

Big 12

Five teams lost

(3) Oklahoma and (4) West Virginia remain

SEC

Four teams lost

(1) Kentucky remains

Missouri Valley

One team lost

(1) Wichita State won

West Coast

One team lost

(1) Gonzaga remains

Pythagoras is also curious about the relationship between tournament seedings, and actual results to date, so here are the stats.

Seeds Surviving

 1.        three teams  Kentucky, Wisconsin, Duke

 2.        two teams     Arizona, Gonzaga

 3.        two teams     Notre Dame, Oklahoma

 4.        two teams     North Carolina, Louisville

 5.        two teams     West Virginia, Utah

 6.        one team       Xavier

 7.        two teams     Wichita State, Michigan State

 8.        one team       North Carolina State

11.        one team       UCLA

Other Pythagorean factoids to bear in mind:

No team whose name began with a "V" survived the opening rounds, four teams lost.

Three teams whose name began with a "N" and three whose name began with a "W" made the Sweet Sixteen, along with two whose name began with "U".

North Carolina was the state with the most teams, three, while Kentucky and California had two teams each.

Roughly speaking, the geographic distribution of teams is:

Northeast - 1

Southeast - 3

Midwest - 8

West - 4

Of those from the Midwest, six were east of the Mississippi River, and two were west of the Mississippi River.

As far as mascots, which interested Aristotle, here are the teams, seeding and mascots.  As you can see, there are two Wildcats, Kentucky and Arizona, and little else in common among the schools.  Aristotle seemed most interested in the Spartans of Michigan State.

1 Kentucky Wildcats       

1 Duke Blue Devils      

1 Wisconsin Badgers    

2 Arizona Wildcats       

2 Gonzaga Bulldogs ('Zags)        

3 Notre Dame Fighting Irish   

3 Oklahoma Sooners     

4 Louisville Cardinals      

4 North Carolina Tar Heels      

5 Utah Utes        

5 West Virginia Mountaineers    

6 Xavier Muskeeters          

7  Michigan State Spartans     

7 Wichita State Shockers  

8 NC State Wolfpack       

11 UCLA Bruins

 

   

Of course one stat that is not in the formula is the fan intensity and the cheerleader impact and we can thank the lowest seeded team for bringing along the highest rated cheerleaders to the tourney, eleven seeded UCLA.

So what do my friends Pythagoras & Aristotle think of this unique American past time? 

Stay tuned.

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