Hofstra softball 2018

[ProudofPride]

Selection show is at 10 pm tonight, wish it wasn't so late for those of us on the east coast that have to work the next morning, but oh well.
Is the school doing anything for a public watch party like most schools do? HU always seems to do the selection shows as a closed-off event just for the program in the Pride Lounge. The past few years, JMU has done theirs at a local restaurant with fans encouraged to attend.
One bracketology predicts us as the 2 seed in Arizona's regional. https://fastpitchnews.com/college-softb ... ons/351793

[stuball888]

Pop I agree. Should have had an open viewing for the public like JMU does. Can give more exposure to the program and the school. Hell we should have Chanel 12 filming it

[Hofstra]

I guess we got a good seed? I don't follow this much, but will obviously root for us whenever the chance.

[stuball888]

We go to South Carolina. Not horrible and gives us a chance to get redemption for two earlier losses against the Gamecocks earlier in the year. It is overall a good bracket as each team has 40 wins or more. No weak teams in this bracket. Jmu goes to Tennessee .

[ProudofPride]

I guess we got a good seed? I don't follow this much, but will obviously root for us whenever the chance.

We're the #2 seed in the regional, so we're the second best team of the 4, behind national seed South Carolina. Definitely a decent regional for us to be in, especially after we were royally screwed in 2015 by being sent to Gainesville. Liberty could be sneakily good, they were 36th in the RPI headed into tonight.

Only annoying this is that we won the championship and were sent to #9, while JMU has to rely on an at-large, and is sent to #10, which "technically" is a little bit weaker of a team than South Carolina, at least in the eyes of the selection committee.

[ProudofPride]

Team's reaction: https://twitter.com/HofstraSoftball/sta ... 5632817154

[HofstraHockey]

A few things about when they played South Carolina- they were leading for a while the first time they played them, before fading late, but they were able to put up some hits and had a lot of traffic on the bases.

The second time, it was Sophie Dandola's second career start, and Courtney Scarpato (who has barely pitched this year) gave up half of the runs.

So we'll see. Have to get past Liberty first. I'm a little upset that JMU is in what I would call a slightly "easier" bracket (although none of them are easy). Oh well. They had their chance to put them away during the regular season, and didn't.

[EvanJ]

One bracketology predicts us as the 2 seed in Arizona's regional. https://fastpitchnews.com/college-softb ... ons/351793

That had the wrong team with the America East's automatic bid.

We're the #2 seed in the regional, so we're the second best team of the 4, behind national seed South Carolina. Definitely a decent regional for us to be in, especially after we were royally screwed in 2015 by being sent to Gainesville. Liberty could be sneakily good, they were 36th in the RPI headed into tonight.

Only annoying this is that we won the championship and were sent to #9, while JMU has to rely on an at-large, and is sent to #10, which "technically" is a little bit weaker of a team than South Carolina, at least in the eyes of the selection committee.

Is the 2 seed in the regional the team written farthest from the 1 seed? For example, the top left of http://gohofstra.com/documents/2018/5/1 ... ionals.pdf says:

Oregon (1) vs. Albany
BYU vs. Drake
next Regional
Michigan vs. Notre Dame
Illinois-Chicago vs. Kentucky (16)

Does that mean Drake and Michigan were the 2 seeds? The 2 seed and 3 seed start against each other. Is the benefit of the 2 seed that you get to bat last against the 3 seed?

South Carolina was 25-2 at home and 7-11 away. Hofstra has the fewest wins in their Regional with 40. Every other Regional has a team with 33 or fewer wins.
According to Google Maps, South Carolina is slightly closer than Kentucky to be the nearest Regional to us.

[EvanJ]

We're the #2 seed in the regional, so we're the second best team of the 4, behind national seed South Carolina. Definitely a decent regional for us to be in, especially after we were royally screwed in 2015 by being sent to Gainesville. Liberty could be sneakily good, they were 36th in the RPI headed into tonight.

Only annoying this is that we won the championship and were sent to #9, while JMU has to rely on an at-large, and is sent to #10, which "technically" is a little bit weaker of a team than South Carolina, at least in the eyes of the selection committee.

Hofstra is up to 19th in the RPI and Liberty is up to 32nd. Hofstra is the top mid-major, with only the SEC, ACC, Pac-12, and Big 12 having teams above Hofstra.
Hofstra is the only team from the 11 states ME, RI, CT, MA, VT, NH, NY, NJ, DE, PA, and MD who is not a 4 seed. Those states have exactly 20% of the House of Representatives, so proportionally they would have 9.6 of the 48 teams not 4 seeds. South Carolina is the 9 seed and 9th in the RPI. Tennessee is the 10 seed and 8th in the RPI.

South Carolina, Liberty, and UNC Greensboro are among the 9 teams with at least 45 wins. No other Regional has more than one of those teams.

[HofstraHockey]

Yeah, the win total numbers can be deceptive, but like I said, this is NOT an easy bracket. But, as I mentioned before, I'd much rather be in there against South Carolina than Oregon or UCLA or someone like that.

[ProudofPride]

New additions to Bill Edwards Stadium https://twitter.com/HofstraSoftball/sta ... 5290332160

[stuball888]

It’s a start. Would like to see if fully covered so it can be used in bad weather. JMU has a multiple use one for baseball and softball also pitching rubbers for both sports. There cost was around 500k

[HofstraHockey]

JMU also didn't have an indoor practice facility until now. Hofstra has indoor batting cages in the the PEB and can also be set up in the bubble.

[stuball888]

yes but i would as the coaches would like to see a dedicated one for just baseball and softball.

[HofstraHockey]

Small steps. These are both non-revenue programs. And seeing the work that they did, these had to cost a decent amount.

[ProudofPride]

Nice article on one of next year's incoming recruits. I wonder how good her team and the other teams are in her section. Would be awesome if she could contribute immediately, considering what we're losing offensively after this season. https://www.lohud.com/story/sports/high ... 596238002/

[EvanJ]

http://gohofstra.com/news/2018/5/15/sof ... h=softball is titled "SB: Hofstra Returns To National Polls." The polls disagree about the best team in the CAA. Hofstra is Number 24 in both polls. James Madison is Number 23 in the USA Today/NFCA Poll and Number 25 in the ESPN.com/USA Softball Poll.

[ProudofPride]

Newsday and News 12 both have stories on the team.

https://www.newsday.com/sports/college/ ... 1.18577507

http://longisland.news12.com/clip/14351 ... aa-tourney

[EvanJ]

http://gohofstra.com/news/2018/5/15/sof ... onals.aspx is titled "SB: #24 Hofstra Primed For NCAA Regional." It says Liberty is on a 17 game winning streak. I wonder if this is the first time that two teams with winning streaks of at least 17 played their first NCAA Tournament game against each other. Hofstra won their 27th through 43rd games. The fact that South Carolina has the worst winning percentage in the region shows how strong it is. It would be like a 1-4-5-16, 2-7-10-15, 3-6-11-14, or 4-5-12-13 section of a Basketball bracket having the 1 to 4 seed with the worst winning percentage.

Edit: The average RPI of the teams Liberty beat in their 17 game winning streak is 151.6. The average rank for 296 teams is 148.5. If you take out those teams' losses to Liberty, the average rank could get below 148.5. I weighted the teams based on how many times Liberty beat them during the streak. Only 5 of the 17 wins were against teams in the top 40 percent of the RPI, and their best win in the streak was against North Carolina, who is 68th.

[EvanJ]

https://www.ncaa.com/game/softball/d1/2 ... ty-hofstra will have statistics.