Despite going 1-2 against Stanford, including defeats by nine and seven runs, Arizona softball remained at No. 21 in the USA Today/NFCA coaches poll this week. D1 Softball is on the same page as the coaches, ranking Arizona No. 22 this week. The Wildcats (22-11-1) are on the “others receiving votes” list in the ESPN.com/USA Softball and Softball America polls.
Arizona now stands fifth in the nine-team Pac-12 with a conference record of 5-7. On the positive side, the team has already faced the two teams at the top of the league. They went 1-2 against Washington (9-3 in Pac-12 play) in the second week of conference play before doing the same against Stanford (8-1 in the Pac-12).
The teams ahead of them both had their last game canceled due to the rainy spring across the West. UCLA is in third with a conference record of 6-2 and Oregon stands at 7-4 just ahead of Arizona in fourth place.
The Wildcats have a chance to gain some ground this weekend when they travel to Salt Lake City to play Utah (20-15, 3-9). The Utes have struggled with their pitching this year, giving up a total of 75 runs to conference opponents compared to 70 runs surrendered by Arizona. However, Utah gave up 20 of those runs in a single game, suggesting that it was an outlier and the pitching is stronger than it appears on paper.
Despite falling out of half of the polls, the mathematical formulas are still fairly high on the Wildcats. They are No. 24 in RPI. Warren Nolan’s formulation of ELO has them at No. 32.
