The NCAA News - News and Features

The NCAA News -- July 5, 1999

Softball panel develops format for expanded postseason field

The Division III Softball Committee is examining ways to conduct a 43-team tournament and apply new selection criteria as a way of adjusting to bracket expansion and the new division championship philosophy.

Meeting June 22-25 in Kansas City, Missouri, the committee outlined a new championships format that will include five five-team first-round brackets and three six-team first-round brackets. Incorporating 43 teams into the tournament format forced the committee to add a team to each of three first-round sites.

The five sites with five teams will play a Friday, Saturday and Sunday tournament, with Monday as the rain date, while the three sites hosting six teams will play Friday, Saturday and Sunday, with Monday used for the if-necessary game and also as a rain date.

Those brackets will foster the committee's philosophy of having teams play a maximum of two games on any one day unless weather or unforeseen circumstances prevail. The brackets also allow all championships qualifiers to have approximately the same amount of rest before the start of the national tournament.

Since regions will no longer be used by Division III championships to determine preliminary-round sites, the term "regional" will be replaced with first rounds for reference. This change also forced the committee to examine polls and selection practices.

Polls will be listed by evaluation regions, which are the same regions used by the committee in 1999. Five teams will be ranked for each evaluation region and three additional teams will be mentioned as teams that were considered to help identify strong independents and give additional publicity to institutions.

The committee also noted that all three division softball committees will be coordinating efforts to select championship officials in 2000. Each committee will identify top officials desired for its championship independently and will compare before soliciting officials. The committees then will be able to prevent the same umpires being requested for more than one division as has happened in the past.

In other actions, the committee clarified the language used to determine future championship dates. The formula will read, "The finals of the championship will conclude the Monday prior to Memorial Day and will be played Thursday through Monday. The first rounds are one week prior to the finals and will be played Friday through Sunday or Monday."

The committee also clarified the halted-game policy. All games will still be played to seven innings and the eight-run rule will be in effect. The rule will now also specify that the halted-game rule is in effect for NCAA first-round and national tournament games except the championship and the if-necessary games. Also, for NCAA postseason play, if a regulation game is halted, the regulation-game rule takes precedence if a member of the national committee or its representative(s) deem that all reasonable efforts have been made to complete the halted game.