Hopefully, the No. 4 Oklahoma softball team has a couple more games to play before Sunday, when the all-important national seeds will be determined and the rest of the 64-team field will be filled out for the 2025 NCAA Softball Championship, which starts next week.
The Sooners, the 1-seed in the SEC Softball Tournament this week after winning the regular-season conference title, advanced to the semifinals of the tournament and will face No. 5 Arkansas on Friday afternoon.
If the Sooners are able to get by the Razorbacks, who ended the regular season with six straight SEC series wins, the Sooners will battle either No. 2 Texas A&M or No. 3 Texas for the conference tournament championship on Saturday.
That's all well and good, and you better believe that OU head coach Patty Gasso absolutely would like to add a conference tournament trophy in the Sooners' inaugural season in the SEC, but next week is when the season's main goals clearly come into focus.
Oklahoma fighting for top national seed
Regardless of what happens over the next two days, Oklahoma is in good position to earn one of the top-5 national seeds when the NCAA tournament selections come out on Sunday. The Sooners could even earn the top seed if they run the deck and win out in the SEC tournament.
Softball America, which dropped previous No. 1 Oklahoma to the No. 4 spot this week after the Sooners lost two of three to Florida last weekend, has OU earning the No. 2 national seed behind No. 1 Texas A&M in its latest edition of softball bracketology. That indicates that the staff at Softball America projects A&M and the Sooners to meet for the SEC tournament championship and the Aggies to come out the winner.
What's even more interesting about the Softball America national seed projections, though, is that eight of the top 10 national seeds are SEC schools.
What's important about receiving one of the top-16 national seeds is that those teams get to host one of the 16 NCAA regional tournaments. The top-8 seeds among the 16 regional champions are awarded a host site for Super Regionals. Each of the Super Regional winners advances to the Women's College World Series in Oklahoma City.
Four teams compete in each 16 regional tournaments. Two teams go head-to-head in Super Regionals. Both are double-elimination.
Oklahoma has won an unprecedented four consecutive national championships and eight overall. In each of the last four seasons, the Sooners entered NCAA postseason play as the No. 1 overall seed. OU has hosted an NCAA regional in Norman each of the last 13 seasons and advanced to the super regional round each one.
The Sooners have hosted a Super Regional in 10 of the last 13 seasons the NCAA tournament has been held (an NCAA tournament was not held in the 2020 pandemic season) and have moved on to the Women's College World Series in 12 of the 13 seasons. Seven of Oklahoma's national championships in softball have been during that span.
As far as national seeding is concerned, only once in the last eight seasons has Oklahoma received a seed below No. 4 in the NCAA tournament, and on five occasions the Sooners were the top seed.
Only one time over the last eight seasons as the No. 1 national seed did OU not win it all, in 2019 when Oklahoma lost to UCLA in the WCWS championship series.
What does all that mean this time around? Probably nothing. But considering the 2025 Oklahoma softball team has just three starting position players back from a roster that at its core was virtually in place for all four of the Sooners' consecutive national championship seasons, the fact that this team is in excellent position for a top-5 national seed and yet another national championship run is pretty remarkable.
This is not by far the best Sooner softball team over the last decade, but don't count out Patty Gasso and her staff...and, of course, a little bit of Sooner Magic.
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