Mocs to face FSU in NCAA regional
A day after it earned the Southern Conference’s automatic bid for the NCAA Division I softball tournament, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga learned where it was headed when the 64-team event begins later this week.
The Mocs are one of four teams in the Tallahassee Regional hosted by overall No. 15 seed Florida State (43-14), and UTC (42-14) will take on the Seminoles (43-14) at 4:30 p.m. Friday. Auburn (27-19-1) faces UCF (30-23) in the first game at 2 p.m.
The three-day regional is a double-elimination event, with the winner advancing to next week’s best-of-three super regionals.
The Mocs are 0-9 alltime against the Seminoles, including a 1-0, eightinning loss in 2002, when the run scored on an error and left UTC one game short of the Women’s College World Series.
“I always wonder how that would have redefined us had we made it,” UTC head coach Frank Reed, who was in his first season as the Mocs’ leader that year, said Sunday evening after the bracket was revealed.
Now the Mocs get another opportunity against the Seminoles, who were runners-up to Duke in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament, losing 6-3 in Saturday’s final.
UTC is making its 16th NCAA tournament appearance after rallying from a Friday loss in the winnersbracket final against SoCon tournament host UNC Greensboro to win three elimination games — two against those same Spartans — and earn the title.
The Times Free Press previously reported incorrectly that it was the first time the Mocs have come out of the losers bracket to win the tourney, but the program also did so in 2000 and 2008.
UCF finished fifth in the Big 12 this spring in its first year in that conference, which has the NCAA’s top two seeds in Texas and Oklahoma, although both teams are moving to the SEC next season. Auburn is one of 13 current SEC teams in the NCAA field this year.
“It’s going to be a tough test,” Reed said of facing Florida State. “Plus there’s the fact that there’s two other really, really good teams there. But honestly, if our team plays like we’ve been playing, I don’t think there’s anybody we couldn’t match up with.”