With the Pac-10 title now out of reach, the UCLA softball team turns its focus to securing a bid to host the first round of postseason play.
The top 16 teams out of the 64-team postseason field get to host a four-team NCAA Regional; one team out of each region then advances to Super Regional play.
After dropping two out of three games to California and Stanford last weekend, hosting an NCAA Regional is no longer a guarantee for the Bruins.
UCLA is currently ranked No. 12 in the USA Today/NFCA Top 25 Softball Poll, but will likely move down in Wednesday’s updated polls. If UCLA (34-15, 10-8 Pac-10) is swept in its three games with No. 5 Arizona (38-10-1, 14-3-1) and No. 9 Arizona State (47-14, 11-7) this week, it will have a losing conference record and could be left out of one of the 16 host spots.
“You definitely want to have home-field advantage going into Regionals and Super Regionals,” senior shortstop Jodie Legaspi said. “This is a big weekend for us coming up.”
If UCLA does end up earning home-field advantage for Regional play, it would also give the eight Bruin seniors one last chance to walk out as winners at Easton Stadium after losing their last regular season home game on Sunday. The Bruins have hosted both Regionals and Super Regionals in each of the last three seasons.
“Just being able to play in front of your home fans, your parents, your family, is important to us,” senior 1B/2B/P Lisa Dodd said. “We hope we can come back here.”
ACE OF THE STAFF?: As junior pitcher Anjelica Selden continues to struggle and freshman pitcher Megan Langenfeld continues to thrive, Langenfeld has been seeing more time on the mound while Selden’s innings have been limited.
Langenfeld has made an appearance on the mound in each of the past eight games, starting five of them. In those games, Langenfeld has pitched a total of 38.1 innings, allowing seven earned runs while recording three wins, one loss and one save.
Meanwhile, Selden has pitched in just four of the past eight games, allowing nine earned runs in 11.1 innings, winning one game and losing two.
Langenfeld started back-to-back games against Oregon and Oregon State two weekends ago and started both weekend games against Stanford last weekend. Whereas a dominant Selden has pitched literally every inning in postseason play in her first two seasons, coach Kelly Inouye-Perez said she will use both Selden and Langenfeld in postseason this year.
“Megan is doing everything that the team needs her to do right now,” Perez said. “It’s a strong point for us to have two pitchers: one with experience and one that is gaining experience through the Pac-10. We go into postseason knowing that we have two pitchers on our staff instead of any one person leading the way.”
PAC-10 TIGHTENS UP: With Arizona clinching the Pac-10 title over the weekend, the rest of the spots in the Pac-10 race are still to be determined. The battle for second place is between Washington, Arizona State and UCLA. Both the Huskies and the Sun Devils are one game ahead of the Bruins, but UCLA and Washington get to play Arizona State this weekend.
Meanwhile, California, after scoring four consecutive upset victories over the likes of Arizona State, UCLA and Washington, has jumped out of last place and into seventh place in the Pac-10 with a 6-12 record. The wins by the Golden Bears guaranteed them a winning record and made them the last Pac-10 team to become eligible for postseason play.
If all eight Pac-10 teams get selected for the 64-team field, it would be the third time in the last five years that every Pac-10 team has made the NCAA Tournament.