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AnthemForOne
Joined: 2/07/05 Posts: 2,586
UCLA softball rises to #6 in the rankings; Furd down to 8
Posted Tue, Apr 23 9:48 am
...from 5. UCLA's well poised now to claim the final conference title with series at home against 5th-place/20th-ranked Arizona and in Tempe v. 10th-place/unranked ASU while the Cardinal play at 3rd-place/10th-ranked Arizona and host 4th-place/23rd-ranked Oregon to close out the regular season. It'll be exceedingly valuable to finish strong going into the conference tournament and set themselves up with a sufficiently high seeding in the NCAA's to host at Easton through the super regionals. Watching last weekend's performance on the Farm, the Bruins definitely show potential signs of peaking at the right time, though still some wrinkles that could be ironed out. Should be fun to keep following from here on.

"The only thing I know is that I know nothing."
~Socrates
AnthemForOne
Joined: 2/07/05 Posts: 2,586
Correction: Meant to type Stanford playing at
Posted Tue, Apr 23 6:13 pm
In response to UCLA softball rises to #6 in the rankings; Furd down to 8 (AnthemForOne)
...3rd-place/10th-ranked WASHINGTON, not Arizona.

"The only thing I know is that I know nothing."
~Socrates
Woochifer
Joined: 12/15/11 Posts: 9,123
End of a storied rivalry this weekend
Posted Wed, Apr 24 10:27 am
In response to UCLA softball rises to #6 in the rankings; Furd down to 8 (AnthemForOne)
A lot of memorable softball battles between UCLA and Arizona. Between 1987 and 2007, either UCLA or Arizona played in the championship final every year, and they played each other for the nattie 6 times during that stretch.

Zona has fallen off in recent years, and UCLA has had the upper hand in the head-to-head matchups for the past decade. But, the intensity level still ratchets up whenever the two teams meet. With UCLA headed to the B1G and Zona headed to the Big XII, the two teams won't have scheduled series against each other anymore. They'll still likely play each other in the big preseason tournaments and in the postseason. But, it won't be the same as matching up 3 times during the regular season every year and being in the WCWS virtually every year (Zona missed the WCWS 8 straight years after losing to UCLA in the national championship series in 2010).