Oklahoma softball seeded No. 1 in 2019 NCAA Championship
By Chip Rouse
Oklahoma softball will begin its quest for a 12th Women’s College World Series appearance and a fifth national championship as the No. 1 seed in the 2019 NCAA Softball Championship.
The Sooners, who have won an NCAA record 39 consecutive games, will host the Norman Regional, beginning on Friday. Oklahoma will host the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) in the second game on Friday evening at Marita Hynes Field. The Retrievers (30-22) are champions of the America East Conference.
The other two teams in the double-elimination Norman Regional are Wisconsin (40-12) out of the Big Ten and Notre Dame (36-16). Those two teams will meet in the opening game on Friday night.
This is the second time in program history that Oklahoma has been the No. 1 overall seed. The Sooners have appeared in the NCAA Tournament in all 25 seasons that Patty Gasso has been head coach. OU has won the national championship as winners of the Women’s College World Series three of the past five years (2014, 2016 and 2017).
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The seniors on the Sooner roster have been to the WCWS every season they have been at OU, and they are shooting for a third national title.
The winners of the two opening-round games on Friday will play each other in the first of three games on Saturday. The losers of the Friday games will meet in an elimination game in game two on Saturday. A third game, on Saturday evening, will feature the winner of the elimination game against the loser of Saturday’s first game.
The two remaining teams will meet in the championship round on Sunday. If a second game is necessary to determine a champion, it will be played later on Sunday.
The winner of the Norman Regional will advance to the Super Regionals against the winner of the Evanston Regional, which is being hosted by Northwestern. If Oklahoma wins the regional tournament, the Sooners will host one of the eight Super Regionals.
This will be Oklahoma’s ninth consecutive year as a regional host site, and the 13th consecutive year that the Sooners have earned one of the 16 national seeds.
The Sooners earned the Big 12’s automatic NCAA bid as Big 12 regular-season champions for the eighth consecutive year. This years Big 12 Championship tournament was cancelled after six games because of unplayable weather conditions on Saturday in the Oklahoma City area and expected for the entire weekend.