On Thursday at 11:30 AM PT on ESPN in Oklahoma City, No. 9 Stanford softball will begin the Women’s College World Series against No. 1 Oklahoma. Stanford is coming off a two-game road sweep of No. 8 Duke in the Super Regional round.
Stanford SB heading to College World Series after sweeping Duke
The other teams in the World Series are No. 5 Alabama, No. 4 Tennessee, No. 6 Oklahoma State, No.3 Florida State, No. 15 Utah, and No. 7 Washington. Alabama will open with Washington, Oklahoma State with Florida State, and Utah with Washington.
For Stanford, they have really woken up offensively during this postseason while maintaining their elite level of pitching. Coming into the tournament we knew Alana Vawter, NiJaree Canady, and Regan Krause were going to bring it in the pitching circle. Whether or not the offense would deliver was the real question. If Stanford is going to win the whole thing, they’re going to need their offense to continue to play well behind what is perhaps the best pitching staff in the nation. Aly Kaneshiro and Kylie Chung have done a great job of providing power, but it's really going to need to be a team effort with everyone doing their part.
As far as how they’ve done against the competition in the field, Stanford lost to Oklahoma back in February by a final score of 10-1 in six innings. It was at a neutral site event in Irvine, CA and Oklahoma was ranked #1 in the nation at the time, so they’ve really been the consistent national front runner from the jump.
At Utah, Stanford got swept and at home against Washington, Stanford lost two out of three games to close out the regular season. In total, Stanford is 1-6 against teams that are in the College World Series. On those grounds, they really have their work cut out for them though it should be noted that three of those six losses were by one run. They could easily be 4-3 in those games.
Overall, it’s going to be a lot of fun to see how Stanford does in the College World Series now that they are here. It’s their first appearance since 2004, so regardless of how it goes, this season has already been a huge success. Just like at the start of this tournament, the big question mark remains the hitting. If they can put up enough runs, they’ll be really tough to stop. If they can’t generate much offense, they’re likely looking at an early exit. It’s that simple.
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