I didn’t do as well in the Super Regionals round as with my opening Regionals round picks. This round I only went 4-4 with them.

It was a good year for Big 12 teams in the Super Regionals this year with, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas all winning their series and making it to the big show in Oklahoma City this year.

It wasn’t a good year for the SEC though with, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, LSU, Kentucky, Ole Miss, Missouri, Texas A&M, and Auburn all getting knocked out in the Regionals Round and Arkansas and Mississippi State losing in their Super Regionals.

The only SEC moving on to the WCWS is Florida. After losing game one of the series to Virginia Tech in a game that stared Friday but due to torrential rain had to be finished early Saturday morning 6-0 Florida came back in game two to win 7-2 forcing a game three in the series. And did they ever come to play in Sunday’s game having an 11-0 lead going into the fourth inning and going on to win by a final score of 12-0 in a 5-innings run-rule game.

The ACC had a record number of six teams in this year’s tournament including, Virginia Tech, Florida State, Clemson, Duke, Georgia Tech and Notre Dame.

Clemson and Duke made it to the Super Regionals before being eliminated while the other four ACC teams were eliminated in the opening round of the Tournament.

Oklahoma State was just two much for ACC’s Clemson winning their Super Regional match-up in two straight games and becoming the first team to officially punch their ticket to Oklahoma City. Even though they didn’t make it to this year’s WCWS I see a bright future for Clemson softball. It’s amazing how fast the Tigers have become a powerhouse winning program in their short softball history.

The good news for UCF was that they made it to the Super Regionals round for the first time in school history. The bad news was their opponent’s were the softball jagerknot and tournament #1seed Oklahoma. The Sooners made it a quick series with their shutdown pitching and home run hitting power to sweep UCF in two straight games.

It took them three games but Pac-12 team Arizona defeated Mississippi State who was playing at home to move on to the 2022 WCWS. The game’s attendance of 2,299 was a Nusz Park record and the largest collegiate softball crowd on record in the state of Mississippi.

Even though I thought Texas would give Arkansas a good run I really thought with the pitching and power hitting of the Razorbacks and the fact that Texas has been riding Hailey Dolcini’s arm to the point of exhaustion that Texas wouldn’t be able to pull off the series win. I was wrong though Dolcini played through the pain in the first two games and freshman Sophia Simpson pitched an unbelievable third game to help secure both the game and series win for Texas to send them back to the WCWS for the sixth time and the first time for them since 2013. Also senior second baseman Janae Jefferson had a great series for Texas, both in the field and at the plate to help secure the 2-1 (7-1L, 3-1W, 3-0W) series win. Texas thought that they got overlooked when they didn’t t get to be a regional host this year and now after their win over Arkansas in the Super Regionals to move on to the WCWS the NCAA had no traditional winner’s hats, shirts, or big ticket for Texas. They were the only team that didn’t receive them after winning their Super Regionals.

Oregon State defeated fellow Pac-12 team Stanford in two straight games to move on to the WCWS for only the second time (2006, 2022) in school history.

Pac-12’s UCLA took their series with Duke in two straight games to move on to familiar ground for the Bruins playing in the WCWS.

This was a hard fought series that could have been won by either team but when the dust settled Big Ten school Northwestern won the third game of the series over Pac-12’s Arizona State to move on to the WCWS.