Wisconsin softball: UW earns bid to NCAA Tournament; set to play Georgia Tech

On Sunday night, the Wisconsin Badgers softball team learned their postseason fate. After finishing the season with a 28-19 record overall (12-11 Big Ten) the Badgers are headed south to Florida to play in the Gainesville Regional. They will play the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets first in the regional round on Friday and, if they win, will take on the winner of 14-seed Florida and Canisius in their next game. As a quick FYI: the regional round of the tournament is double elimination for those who don’t follow softball closely.

The regional round of the tourney runs from May 20-22 and the super regionals start on May 26 and run through May 29. The Badgers first game is on Friday, May 20 at 1 p.m. CT and will air live on ESPNU.

This is the fourth time in the last five years that Wisconsin is going dancing, the sixth time overall under head coach Yvette Healy and the ninth time in program history. The Badgers are 10-10 in the NCAA tournament under Healy. Here is a link to the full bracket.

“Going into the day I felt great,” Healy said in a UW release. “The wins that we put together, beating Minnesota in the Big Ten Tournament, we felt very good. But when you are in that room waiting for your name to come up and it doesn’t, and you have to wait until the end, it’s something. There were a lot of tears shed when Wisconsin came up on the screen.”

Other Big Ten teams in the tourney include:

Illinois
Michigan
Minnesota
Nebraska
Northwestern
Ohio State

The top-16 seeds in the tournament are:

1-seed Oklahoma
2-seed Florida State
3-seed Virginia Tech
4-seed Arkansas
5-seed UCLA
6-seed Alabama
7-seed Oklahoma State
8-seed Arizona State
9-seed Northwestern
10-seed Clemson
11-seed Tennessee
12-seed Duke
13-seed Washington
14-seed Florida
15-seed Missouri
16-seed UCF