Southeast Missouri (45-16) will represent the Ohio Valley Conference at the Oxford, Mississippi NCAA Softball Regional this week.
SEMO will join host Ole Miss (37-17), Chattanooga (37-15) and Louisiana (50-4) at the four-team Regional. The Redhawks will face Louisiana in their first game of the NCAA Tournament on Friday, May 17 at 3:30 p.m., CT. The SEMO and Louisiana matchup will air live on ESPN3.
The Redhawks make their second NCAA Tournament appearance in program history and first in 20 years. SEMO’s only other NCAA Tournament appearance was at the Tuscon, Arizona Regional in 1999. SEMO also won both its last OVC regular-season and tournament titles that year.
SEMO enters the NCAA Tournament after winning eight of its last nine games. The Redhawks went 4-1 and beat Jacksonville State twice to win the OVC Tournament Championship. OVC schools are 17-41 all-time in NCAA Tournament play.
The University of Oklahoma earned the No. 1 seed in the NCAA Division I Softball Championship as the 64-team field was announced today by the NCAA Division I Softball Committee. The Sooners will host the University of Maryland, Baltimore County an automatic qualifier from the America East.
Thirty-two conferences were awarded an automatic qualification, while the remaining 32 slots were filled with at-large selections to complete the bracket. The top 16 teams were seeded nationally and will play at campus sites beginning this Thursday.
Team pairings were determined by geographic proximity, with the exception that teams from the same conference were not paired during regional competition.
The Southeastern Conference led all leagues with 13 teams selected to the championship tournament. The Big Ten Conference placed six teams in the championship tournament. Two teams are making their first appearance in the tournament: Detroit Mercy University and Seattle University.
Since the tournament began in 1982, only 13 schools have been crowned the NCAA Division I softball champion. 11 of the 13 teams will compete in this year’s bracket.