Late Night

A few developments stood out to me from today's action in the Palm Springs tournament. For one thing, Northwestern handed No. 2 Arizona State its first loss of the season, with four runs in the top of the seventh propelling the Purple to a 5-2 win (here's a box score; articles should be available at some point on each school's team page).

Also, Oklahoma burst onto my radar screen today, defeating two nationally ranked Pac-10 teams, Oregon State and Cal. The Sooners are undefeated so far this season, but the quality of their opposition prior to Palm Springs was not exactly stellar (game-by-game log).

Elsewhere, Texas A&M rebounded from its opening loss at Arizona in the teams' three-game series, the Aggies winning 4-3 tonight on the strength of a grand-slam homer by Jamie Hinshaw.

Note that, because Northwestern and the University of Arizona are both known as the Wildcats, bringing upon the height of confusion when the two met in the championship round of last June's NCAA Women's College World Series, I try as best as possible to distinguish the two teams. In that regard, I have taken often to calling Northwestern "the Purple," for its distinctive school colors.

In today's most bizarre outcome, Texas Tech held a 7-0 lead over Florida Atlantic as the latter came to bat in the bottom of the seventh in the Boca Raton tournament, only to have FAU come up with eight runs (six after there were two outs) to win 8-7. Texas Tech still qualified, however, for Sunday's championship game against Illinois.

Early Morning

Since Friday's feature games took place in the evening in the Pacific and Mountain Time zones, I didn't have a chance to report these late results last night. Hence, this early morning entry.

In the Palm Springs tournament, No. 1-ranked Tennessee closed out last night's action with a 6-1 thumping of UCLA. Also, Northwestern defeated Oregon State, 2-0. If you go down to my previous posting in which I previewed this tournament and click on the highlighted link that says "information sheet," you can get the scores of completed games. Also, by clicking on the score of a particular game, you can get the box score. Articles and further details can be obtained by visiting the team-specific homepages in the links section on the right-hand side of the present page.

The other focus of interest in the college softball world last night was, of course, the opener of a three-game series in Tucson between Texas A&M and Arizona. As described in this article from the Wildcat athletics site, U of A shut out A&M 5-0 behind a Taryne Mowatt one-hitter. For the Aggies, after some early success, pitcher Amanda Scarborough did not "fare" so well (for those of you too young to get that reference, see here).