Graham Hays, ESPN.com 9y

NCAA Softball: 5 Things You Need To Know

NCAA Softball

How much went on during the past week in college softball? All five hits by Louisiana-Lafayette All-American Lexie Elkins in a weekend sweep of Sun Belt foe Texas State went over the fence for home runs, part of a weekend in which she drove in eight runs, and that's the last you'll hear of it.

With apologies to the slugging catcher fueling the Ragin' Cajuns, here are five stories worth knowing.

1. Second act in Nebraska

It was a busy week and, all things considered, a good week for Nebraska. Faced with five conference games, the Huskers first swept a midweek doubleheader at Iowa. After defeats in the first two games of a subsequent weekend series at home against Minnesota, they clinched a winning record for the week with a 5-3 upset win against the 12th-ranked Gophers in Sunday's finale. This always shaped up as a restructuring season in Lincoln, if not an outright rebuilding one after the departures of twins Tatum and Taylor Edwards and others, but a .500 record out of conference. Nebraska is 6-2 in the Big Ten and doesn't play Michigan this season. The NCAA tournament isn't out of the realm of possibility at all.

And wouldn't that be a sweet ending for Steph Pasquale?

If she had her way, Pasquale would presumably still be in Philadelphia playing out her final season for Temple. The problem, of course, is Temple no longer has a softball team. The university abruptly eliminated the program with barely a season of notice. Pasquale and any of her teammates who wanted to continue playing had to find new homes, so you'll see remnants of the Owls scattered across the softball map -- Kelsey Dominik at Coastal Carolina, Kaylyn Zierke at Murray State, Amanda Gatt at Siena, among others. Some simply aren't playing. Limited to a handful of games a season ago, hence the extra season of eligibility, but a third-team All-American the season before that, Pasquale ended up at Nebraska. And whatever the path to the land of the Platte River, it's working out well for all involved.

Pasquale drove in a run in the upset against Minnesota on Sunday, but she made her most impressive mark during the Iowa doubleheader. In those two games alone, she totaled three home runs and three doubles among seven hits and drove in 10 runs. For the season, she's hitting .378 with a 1.094 OPS and just five strikeouts in 90 plate appearances. The performance against the Hawkeyes wasn't even her best doubleheader -- she once hit four home runs and drove in 11 runs for Temple at St. Bonaventure -- but her second act is helping the Huskers find second life this season.

2. Top-ranked team stumbles in Bluegrass State

At the risk of making a reference more antiquated by the day, the SEC is Frogger, the video game classic. Just when you make it across all the lanes of traffic and pick your way across the floating logs -- just when you think the hardest part is over -- the turtle on which you're hitching a ride disappears and sends you back to the starting line.

There is just no time to rest.

Kentucky experienced that reality in its first two conference series. A World Series participant a season ago that started well this season, the Wildcats lost five of their first six conference games, all on the road, to fall well off the pace. But behind the same formula of quality pitching and timely hitting that worked so well a season ago, including home runs from Griffin Joiner and Nikki Sagermann this past weekend, they won two in a row against an LSU team that had lost once in its first 32 games. As with most SEC series, it's risky to do much more than savor it for the competition it was. LSU is still really good. Kentucky was better than its early conference losses suggested. No one survives unscathed; they just hope they emerge better for the experience in the postseason, as the Pac-12 has done for so many years.

What could have long-term implications, not uniquely but as part of a trend, was how Kentucky coach Rachel Lawson deployed her pitching staff. After Kelsey Nunley's complete game in the opener, Kentucky mixed and matched. In a 2-0 loss in the finale, with Nunley pitching well again, Lawson brought in freshman lefty Erin Rethlake to pitch to two left-handed batters in the seventh, then brought Nunley back to face a right-handed for the final out. Situational swaps are common in baseball but still rare in softball. That's changing, and the re-entry rule makes the maneuver a potent weapon.

3. Oregon makes its case

Not necessarily a case for No. 1 in the wake of LSU's setbacks. The Ducks reclaimed the top spot, but even if they had fell short of a plurality because of a 10-2 loss at home against Washington, a rare run-rule defeat for the home team at Howe Field, they made a persuasive point. If the same rule that applies in the SEC still applies in the Pac-12 -- that perfection is an impossible standard and teams will stumble -- then Oregon's ability to both score in bunches and bounce back matters.

While they were run-ruled in the middle game, the Ducks returned the favor in the other two games against the Huskies and scored 23 runs in the process. The day after the embarrassing loss, they scored two runs in the first inning, one more in the second and exploded for 10 runs in the third inning en route to a 15-6 win. In just four trips to the plate (they obviously didn't need the bottom of the fifth), they hit eight home runs, including five from first-year transfers Hailey Decker and Geri Ann Glasco.

Being mentally strong enough to take a bad day in stride is one thing. Having the bats to do something about it (along with a pitcher like Cheridan Hawkins, who threw a perfect game in the series opener) is another.

That Oregon-Washington interstate rivalry takes precedence because of the ramifications for the Top 25 and, let's face it, the curiosity factor of back-to-back-to-back five-inning games in which the teams traded wins, but we'd be remiss to omit Arizona seizing the upper hand in its intrastate rivalry with Arizona State. The schools have split their past six series.

4. The team you don't want to draw

Spring is a lovely time of year to visit Harrisonburg, Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley home of James Madison (the school, not the president). We bring you this public service message because it's time to wonder if opponents will get the chance to check it out for themselves during the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament. Sure, the best program from a mid-major league this side of Louisiana-Lafayette still has a lot of work to do to get into position to host a regional -- and may well need a good bit of assistance beyond its control -- but the evidence of its worthiness continues to accumulate.

The Dukes completed a 5-0 week by sweeping a doubleheader at North Carolina and winning all three games of a weekend series at home against Colonial Athletic Association foe College of Charleston. That was the second week in a row the Dukes swept a road doubleheader against an ACC opponent and a weekend conference series (Virginia and Towson were the victims the previous week). All told, James Madison is working with a 18-game winning streak, which includes a signature win against UCF on that team's field. The CAA juggernaut also beat Minnesota earlier this season.

The résumé still lacks the quantity of top-end RPI wins that the competition for NCAA tournament seeding will have, and there aren't many more opportunities to add to it (likely just a doubleheader against Virginia Tech). But home or away, James Madison will have Jailyn Ford and Megan Good in the postseason. That's reason enough for opponents to hope to steer clear. Ford pitched six scoreless innings against the Tar Heels (spread across both games) and has 106 strikeouts against just 17 walks this season. One of the season's impressive freshmen, Good picked up a win of her own in relief against the Tar Heels, worked 14 1/3 innings against Charleston and has 114 strikeouts against just 21 walks on the season. For good measure, the two of them combined to go 14-of-34 at the plate with eight RBIs.

5. Big showing in the Big 12

The Big 12 is not the SEC or the Pac-12. Oklahoma and Baylor give it strength at the top but it is inarguably shallow in quantity (with just seven softball-playing members) and arguably in quality, at least in relation to its aforementioned competition. So while teams in other leagues can have a bad weekend and come back to make a statement the next, both Kansas and Texas needed to make the most of their series this past weekend. Only the Longhorns did.

Texas, which beat Georgia and UCLA on the same glorious day back in February but also subsequently lost to Lamar and Georgia Southern, scored 24 runs on the road to sweep three games from the Jayhawks. The most important run producer in the lineup, Lindsey Stephens, went 6-for-12 with two home runs in the series and has raised her average from .288 at the end of the day on March 1 to .350 as the month comes to a close. Freshman Erica Wright shows promise in the circle amid a committee of Texas pitchers, but this team needs to score if it wants to sneak into the conversation with the Sooners and Lady Bears.

^ Back to Top ^