Western Oregon Journal

(U-WIRE) CORVALLIS, Ore.—The Oregon State softball team is ready to make
its seventh consecutive postseason appearance, this time in Madison, Wis.

OSU is seeded No. 8 at regionals and is slated to take on Wisconsin-Green Bay.

The No. 6 Beavers received an automatic berth to the NCAA Tournament after earning a share of the Pac-10 conference title.

Rounding out OSU's bracket will be DePaul and Wisconsin, both of which the Beavers are familiar with.

The Beavers faced DePaul last season and Wisconsin earlier this season in the Palm Springs Classic, where they defeated the Badgers 8-7 in eight innings. Last season, DePaul was in the same region as OSU.

"I hadn't really even contemplated Wisconsin when I was thinking about some places, but it certainly fits with the M.O. of where we would go," said OSU manager Kirk Walker. "I think we have a solid region, but definitely a winnable region."

Although they struggled against No. 12 UCLA and No. 21 Washington last weekend, OSU's record of 40-14, 13-8 in the Pac-10 won the tiebreaker over No. 2 Cal, No. 3 Arizona and No. 4 Stanford.

"Our last weekend didn't go exactly as planned, but what we did before in the season helped us come out with a Pac-10 championship," said sophomore ace Brianne McGowan. "So that was really exciting for us. It's good to get it out now before we go to regionals."

Walker hopes his team learns and grows from a tough weekend in which the Beavers were outscored 23-1 in three games.

"You learn from everything, certainly when you're in a conference like the Pac-10," Walker said. "You hopefully can survive the pitfalls and rejoice in the positives, and I think we've been very fortunate that six of the eight weekends were pretty positive for us.

"This was by far our weakest weekend in the Pac-10. We're the only team that hadn't had a bad weekend, so we had to have it on the last weekend."

The Beavers aren't the only Pac-10 team garnering top regional spots.

Six of the top-16 teams are Pac-10 teams, and five of them are in the top eight.

Cal is No. 2, Arizona is No. 3, Stanford is No. 6, defending national champion, UCLA is No. 7 and Washington is No. 16.

All eight Pac-10 teams are playing in regionals, as Arizona State is playing in Region 12 and Oregon in Region 14.

Leading the 64 Division I teams is No. 1 seeded Michigan (55-4).

The tournament is double elimination with the winner of each regional advancing to the Super Regional.

The eight Super Regional winners advance to the 2005 Women's College World Series.

Many of the girls believe that the way this season has played out, the Beavers could play for the national title.

"I'm really excited," said senior second baseman Kelly Petersen. "I'm proud of how our team's done thus far, and I think we definitely have a shot of going all the way this year."

The Beavers play their first regional game at 5:30 p.m. on Friday. Tournament play runs from Friday, May 20 to Sunday, May 22.

Article Tools