BATON ROUGE — For the first time since 2001, Tiger Park will be home of an NCAA Regional as the LSU softball team earned a No. 15 overall seed in the 2006 NCAA Championships and will host NCAA Regional Tournament beginning on Friday.
The Tigers (51-12), ranked 11th in the USA Softball poll, will play Princeton (34-17), winners of the Ivy League, in the first round of the four-team double-elimination tournament at 7 p.m. on Friday. All of the tournament games will be broadcast on the LSU Sports Radio Network in Baton Rouge on The X – 104.5/104.9 FM. The broadcasts can also be heard in the GeauxZone powered by USAgencies on LSUsports.net.
“We got what we earned and we earned the right to stay home,” said LSU head coach Yvette Girouard. “We were embarrassed by our season last year and that was the beginning of putting things together for this season. Every player was willing to do what it took to get us back to where we were.”
Fans can purchase tickets for the NCAA Regional Tournament online at LSUsports.net. All-Session tickets are $40 for adults and $25 for youth under 12 years of age. The all-session tickets are good for every game of the regional tournament. Seat locations will be assigned at a later date in the order in which the tickets were purchased. All tickets must be picked up at will call with a valid ID beginning on Wednesday, May 17.
With the Tigers remaining at home for NCAA Regional play, LSU fans will get a chance to see the four-team senior class in action one last time. Seniors Lauren Castle, Lauren Delahoussaye, Camille Harris and Stephanie Hill will play their final games in Tiger Park with the chance to keep the season going by advancing to NCAA Super Regionals.
“I’m so happy for this senior class,” said LSU head coach Yvette Girouard. “They are the epitome of LSU Tigers. They cherish putting on that uniform. I overheard Lauren Delahoussaye say on the bus one day that players on other teams won’t miss it after they are done, but I smiled inside when I heard her say that she would miss it everyday. So I’m happy for them that they get to come back to Tiger Park to play one more time.”
If the Tigers were to win their regional, they are paired against the winner of the Arizona Regional and would travel to Tucson, Ariz., to face second-seeded Arizona if the Wildcats advanced out of their regional. The winner of that Super Regional would advance to the Women’s College World Series.
In other Baton Rouge regional action, N.C. State (49-19, winners of the Atlantic Coast Conference regular season and tournament championship, will face Louisiana-Lafayette (48-10), winners of the Sun Belt regular season and tournament championship, on Friday at 4 p.m.
Sixteen teams will be seeded and each of the seeded teams will be placed at one of the regional sites. Four teams will participate at each of sixteen regional sites in a double-elimination tournament. The sixteen teams advancing from regional competition will participate in a two-team, best of three super regional at eight sites on Friday, May 26 and Saturday, May 27. The Women’s College World Series, which begins June 1, will include the eight super regional winners.
The Tigers were one of six SEC schools that advanced to the NCAA Regional round, tying the Big Ten for the third most teams represented in the NCAA Tournament. Regular-season SEC champion Alabama earned the fifth overall national seed, while Tennessee, the SEC Tournament champion, earned the No. 8 national seed. In addition, Georgia earned a No. 11 national seed and Florida earned a No. 16 national seed, giving the SEC the second most national seeds of any conference in the nation behind only the Pac-10.