Transition Year Ahead for Auburn Softball After Missing Another Women’s College World Series

Next softball season, Auburn Coach Mickey Dean will be fielding a team made up mostly of players he recruited (Photo:Cat Wofford/Auburn Athletics)

After years of failing to bring home the Women’s College World Series Championship, the Pac-12 finally broke through to recapture the title that the conference once dominated. UCLA took down Oklahoma, the most stable and elite program in the country. The SEC wasn’t represented in the finals for a second year as Alabama and Florida couldn’t escape each other or Oklahoma.

The two SEC teams had to play in an elimination game in the WCWS. Alabama was seeded eighth and had to start the WCWS against Oklahoma, the overall one seed. Florida and Oklahoma State joined the fray with OSU coming out on top.

On the other side of the bracket, there were three Pac-12 teams plus out-gunned Minnesota, assuring the Pac-12 that least one team would make it to Oklahoma City. It was certainly odd to see Alabama and Florida ranked so low as Alabama was probably the second best team in the country, if not the best, with Oklahoma’s famous win streak buoying its ranking. Florida’s squad had just won the SEC tournament. Yet both were low seeds, Alabama played Oklahoma without success, and UCLA pulled it off by beating the Sooners to end another terrific year of softball.

Not in the discussion for the second time in two years were the Auburn Tigers. The Tigers in their second year under coach Mickey Dean didn’t make it out of regionals. Three years ago, just the thought of not hosting a regional would have been preposterous, much less getting sent home in the first round of the tournament at some other team’s place. Yet, it happened.

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