(Photo courtesy of Joe Fusco, d3photography.com)
(Portions of this story courtesy of Texas Lutheran University)
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – The Texas Lutheran University softball team will travel to Tyler, Texas and compete in a three-team regional May 9-10 in its first-ever NCAA Division III Tournament. Printable Bracket
The regional will feature the Bulldogs, along with regional-host the University Texas at Tyler and East Texas Baptist University. Both Texas-Tyler and ETBU came out of the American Southwest Conference, the same conference TLU left last year before joining the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference this season.
All three teams will play each other, round-robin style, on Friday, with the Bulldogs scheduled to open the regional at 1 p.m. against Texas-Tyler before taking on ETBU at 3:30 p.m.
The Patriots and Tigers will play each other at 6 p.m. If one of the three teams loses both games on Friday, that team is eliminated. The remaining two teams would play the championship round on Saturday.
If all three teams lose one game on Friday, TLU will take on ETBU on Saturday, with the winner facing No. 1-seeded Texas-Tyler in the late game Saturday.
The winner of this three-team regional advances to the super regional round May 16-17 at a site to be determined. The Tyler regional winner plays the Redlands (Calif.) regional winner. The Redlands regional includes Redlands, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (Calif.) and Linfield (Ore.).
Texas-Tyler will enter the tournament as the No. 2-ranked team in the country, according to the NFCA, while East Texas Baptist is No. 8. TLU is ranked No. 6 in the latest NCAA West Region poll.
Texas-Tyler will also host this year's NCAA Division III Softball World Series.
The Bulldogs (32-7, 21-1 SCAC) enter the tournament riding a 14-game winning streak and are fresh off an SCAC Championship title, defeating Trinity 3-0 in the championship round to clinch the tournament berth. They outscored opponents 16-2 in the conference tournament. That domination was an extension of TLU's success in the conference season after outscoring SCAC opponents 194-29 in 22 conference games.
TLU will have a live video feed of all NCAA Tournament games involving the Bulldogs on tlubulldogs.com.
Texas-Tyler (41-4, 31-2 ASC) earned the automatic bid from the ASC after defeating ETBU 5-4 in eight innings in the championship of the conference tournament.
East Texas Baptist (39-7, 29-4 ASC) battled back from the loser's bracket in the ASC Championship after falling to Texas-Tyler earlier in the tournament. The Tigers met back up with the Patriots in the championship round, even forcing a winner-take-all elimination game after a 4-2 win in the first game.