BATON ROUGE — The LSU women’s softball team, coming off Sunday’s Southeastern Conference tournament championship victory over South Carolina, received more good news late Sunday when the NCAA announced that Tiger Park in Baton Rouge would be the site of an NCAA Division I Softball regional for the third consecutive year.
The regional begins this Thursday morning and tickets for the four-day event will go on sale Monday morning (today) at 8 a.m. at the LSU Athletic Ticket Office. Reserved seats are $25 for adults and $15 for children (ages 3-12).
LSU, 59-3 and the third seed nationally in the tournament, will be the No. 1 seed at the Baton Rouge regional and will face Cornell from the Ivy Group in the 4:30 p.m. game on Thursday. Cornell is the sixth-seed and has a record of 35-16.
The first game of the day at 10:30 a.m. matches Arizona State (34-20) of the Pac-10 and Penn State (32-25) of the Big 10. Arizona State is the No. 2 seed, while Penn State has drawn the fifth seed in the event.
The second game of the four-game first day will match two familiar names to regional play in Baton Rouge as the University of Louisiana-Lafayette (48-8) from the Sun Belt Conference faces off against Southern Mississippi (45-19). USM has advanced to the College World Series each of the last two years from the Baton Rouge regional. That game is scheduled for 1:30 p.m.
“It’s kind of what I figured who they were going to send.” said LSU coach Yvette Girouard, who was here last year for the regional as the coach of the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. “We kind of knew we’d get a Pac-10 school and it’s a school we’ve played and beaten on their home field. We knew we’d get a Pac-10 school, we just didn’t know which one. We also thought we’d get ULL and Southern Miss. and a team from the East.”
The loser of the LSU-Cornell game and the loser of the Arizona State-Penn State game must come back and play the 7:30 p.m. nightcap on Thursday as one team is eliminated on the first day in the new regional bracket being used this year in Division I softball.
There will be three games on Friday at 1, 4 and 7 p.m. and there will be two or three games on Saturday, depending on the number of teams left at that point. The championship game or games begin on Sunday at 1 p.m.
DATES/SITES/PAIRINGS:
* Indicates host institution
Seed No. 1 – May 17-20 at Tucson, Arizona
No. 1 seed *Arizona (57-4)
No. 2 seed Cal State Fullerton (46-12)
No. 3 seed Hawaii (45-15)
No. 4 seed Southwest Texas State (52-10)
No. 5 seed Texas Tech (35-22)
No. 6 seed St. Peter’s (39-18)
Seed No. 2 – May 17-20 at Los Angeles
No. 1 seed *UCLA (53-5)
No. 2 seed Fresno State (38-17)
No. 3 seed Cal State Northridge (31-22)
No. 4 seed San Diego State (38-23)
No. 5 seed Wisconsin (32-25)
No. 6 seed Coastal Carolina (27-21)
Seed No. 3 – May 17-20 at Baton Rouge, La.
No. 1 seed *LSU (53-9)
No. 2 seed Arizona State (34-20)
No. 3 seed Louisiana-Lafayette (48-8)
No. 4 seed Southern Mississippi (45-19)
No. 5 seed Penn State (32-25)
No. 6 seed Cornell (35-16)
Seed No. 4 – May 17-20 at Tuscaloosa, Ala.
No. 1 seed *Alabama (48-9)
No. 2 seed Michigan (39-15-1)
No. 3 seed Oregon State (42-22)
No. 4 seed South Florida (41-32)
No. 5 seed Chattanooga (48-16)
No. 6 seed Illinois-Chicago (46-23)
Seed No. 5 – May 17-20 at Norman, Okla.
No. 1 seed *Oklahoma (45-7)
No. 2 seed Washington (37-21)
No. 3 seed North Carolina (37-17-1)
No. 4 seed Massachusetts (43-11)
No. 5 seed Seton Hall (29-14)
No. 6 seed Lehigh (38-13)
Seed No. 6 – May 17-20 at Stanford, Calif.
No. 1 seed *Stanford (48-13-1)
No. 2 seed Nebraska (49-13)
No. 3 seed Pacific (California) (47-11)
No. 4 seed Central Michigan (36-18)
No. 5 seed Brigham Young (35-24)
No. 6 seed Hofstra (36-24)
Seed No. 7 – May 17-20 at Iowa City, Iowa
No. 1 seed *Notre Dame(51-5)
No. 2 seed Iowa (45-12)
No. 3 seed South Carolina (40-18-1)
No. 4 seed DePaul (50-14-1)
No. 5 seed Illinois State (35-16)
No. 6 seed Western Illinois (33-19)
Seed No. 8 – May 17-20 at Tallahassee, Fla.
No. 1 seed *Florida State (54-10)
No. 2 seed California (49-14)
No. 3 seed Florida Atlantic (45-19)
No. 4 seed Florida (36-25)
No. 5 seed Connecticut (35-21)
No. 6 seed Bethune-Cookman (45-21)
Teams advancing to the Women’s College World Series, May 24-28 at the ASA Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma City, Okla., will advance into the Women’s College World Series bracket according to regional seeding.