Softball a Sixth Seed at NCAA Regionals

"Oklahoma! "

On Sunday night, the members of the Harvard softball team gathered in front of the big screen television at the Crimson Sports Grille to discover where they would be headed for the NCAA Regionals, which begin on Thursday.

Harvard could have been headed to any one of eight Regional sites, hosted by the top teams throughout the country. With six players on the team from the metro Los Angeles area, the UCLA regional and the Fresno State regional were high on the team's wish list.

The regional hosted by No. 1 Washington led off the selection show. The Crimson managed to avoid a date with the top team in the country.

When the regional hosted by Arizona popped onto the screen, freshman Monica Montijo, a Tucson native, did what she could to make Harvard's name appear on the screen. Harvard again was passed by.

But when No. 3 Oklahoma (56-8) flashed onto the screen, none of the shouting or the negative vibes emanating from the team could prevent Harvard's name and record from appearing alongside the Sooners'.

"A lot of us were hoping to go to California, because a lot of us are from there," sophomore pitcher Suzanne Guy said. "But either way we're in the playoffs."

Oklahoma is a familiar opponent for all the juniors and seniors on the Crimson roster. The Sooners were singularly responsible for Harvard's elimination in its only regional appearance in 1998. The Crimson lost to the Sooners 8-0 in the Regional opener, and then fell 3-0 two days later.

"They're a very good team," Coach Jenny Allard said. "They're very strong on the mound and they can hit the ball."

The Sooners earlier in the season boasted the best overall win percentage in the country. They were the Big 12 regular season champions, but a 9-6 loss to Texas A&M and a 3-1 loss to Nebraska knocked them out in the Big 12 playoffs.

The complete seedings for the double-elimination regional are as follows: 1. Oklahoma (56-8), 2. Oregon State (37-19-1), 3. Arkansas (41-28), 4. Cal St. Northridge (26-24), 5. Northwestern (28-24) and 6. Harvard (19-19).

The winner of the Regional Tournament advances to the College World Series in Oklahoma City.

Six-team double-elimination tournaments are a complicated lot. They don't run as smoothly as eight or four team-tournaments, which can maintain separate winners and losers brackets until the very end.

With a victory over Oklahoma, the Crimson would next play the loser of the Arkansas-Cal St. Northridge - that's right -the loser.

With a loss to the Sooners, the Crimson would take on the loser of the Oregon State-Northwestern game. The team failing to win that game would be eliminated.

Any further games would be entirely dependent on the results of other games. The entire list of possibilities takes of up two full pages in the NCAA Handbook.

As a coach, Allard can see the positive side to the assignment to Norman, Oklahoma, as opposed to Seattle or Los Angeles or any of the other seemingly more appealing locations.

"I'm excited to go to Oklahoma," Allard said. "The team preferred the west coast because so many of the kids are from there. But this is exactly where we need to go, because going here we can focus on softball."

No. 6 seeds have had some success in the NCAA Tournament. Last year, the first time the tournament field had a full 48 teams, six-seed Florida Atlantic won games against top-seed Michigan and four-seed Central Michigan before falling in close contests to Arizona State and Nebraska.

Ivy teams have also had their share of success in the tournament. Princeton was the last Ivy team to reach the College World Series. The Tigers did it twice in the mid-1990s, but back then regionals were entirely geographically-based, meaning that Princeton never had to face any of the talented teams from the west to make it.

The last Ivy team to win a game in the NCAA Tournament was, actually, Harvard in 1998. The Crimson posted a dominant 11-2 win over Boston College in between the two losses to Oklahoma.

While the pairing with Oklahoma may have been a slight downer at the time, by Thursday the Crimson will be entirely focused on beating the Sooners.

"Going to the west coast we'd have been totally distracted," Allard said. "This is the best thing that could've happened."