Surviving Round 1

It's funny, but yesterday there was so much softball on that it kind of took me back to those summer days when we would spend a whole Saturday watching our nieces play in a travel ball tournament. I can specifically recall one tournament where they just kept winning and they played something like seven games in one day. That's a lot of softball. Today is going to be even more crazy because not only do we have the second round of games in the Division II tournament for the NCAA, we also have the start of the Division I games.

The majority of people will likely be watching those Division I games versus the Division II games, but there are still some gems out there if you know where to look. Also, if you are just a fan of the game, you probably don't care which game you watch as long as you are seeing some softball. When my wife and I recently visited our niece at university, we were amused to find a number of older people who weren't associated with any particular player, but they just came to watch the home games. I hope that might be me one day, still out and active watching the sport that I have come to love.

Even if I have no vested interest in the players.

So yeah, the D2 bracket kicked off yesterday and while a lot of the games fell about the way you would expect based on the seeding, there were some surprises too.

I watched the game between 8 seed Tiffin and 1 seed UIndy. Despite a grand slam by the Dragons in the middle of the game, the UIndy team grabbed the win 6 to 4. This puts Tiffin one loss away from getting knocked out of the tournament. To be fair, I still think it is crap that Tiffin was given an 8 seed. I also should point out that it was basically a home game for UIndy despite being the national tournament since they were playing on UIndy's field. What a total joke.

As for upsets, there were definitely some of those as I mentioned earlier. Seven seed UAH took down 2 seed West Florida 4 to 0, and in a massive 12 inning upset, 8 seed Lincoln Memorial sent 1 seed North Georgia reeling 8 to 7. Remember this is a double elimination game, so these high seed teams are done yet.

In a bit smaller upset, 5 seed Charleston (WV) got the best of 4 seed Glenville State 9 to 6. Also, back to a 7 seed vs. 2 seed match up, Western Washington had a nice upset over Cal State East Bay 3 to 2. Six seed Missouri S&T took down three seed Findlay 9 to 2, and 5 seed Oklahoma Christian handed 4 seed UT Tyler their first loss of the tournament 10 to 0.

Finally, 6 seed Biola beat 3 seed Lenoir-Rhyme 2 to 1, 5 seed Lander beat 4 seed Columbus State 3 to 2, and 5 seed Cal State Monterey Bay beat 4 seed Cal State Dom Hills 4 to 0.

I should also mention, the college I got my bachelors degree from SVSU took down Ashland 5 to 2. Oddly enough, that means that Tiffin plays Ashland today in an elimination game. Meanwhile, 4 seed SVSU takes on the 1 seed UIndy team that beat Tiffin yesterday.

Actually, since these are regional contests, there are only so many teams they can play. They try to keep their travel low in the early rounds that way fewer teams have to travel to Oklahoma or wherever in the later rounds.