INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- After a week of waiting, the SCAC Regular Season and Tournament Champion Texas Lutheran University Bulldogs travel plans for the NCAA Division III Softball Championship have been announced.
Texas Lutheran (31-3) will travel to Marshall, Texas to compete in a four-team double elimination pod hosted by East Texas Baptist University. This year marks the 10th-straight NCAA appearance for the Bulldogs, highlighted by consecutive three-straight trips to the College World Series (2019-22), the 2019 National Championship and runner-up finish at the 2021 Championship.
TLU will open NCAA play against Chapman (26-14) that earned a Pool C at-large bid after falling in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) Championship on Sunday. This year marks the 14th NCAA Division III Tournament appearance for the Panthers and the second in the last three years. Historically, the SCAC holds a 7-5 (.583) record against teams in the SCIAC in NCAA Tournament play, including a 3-2 mark against Chapman. TLU swept Champman in a five-game series to open play in the 2022 NCAA Tournament at the Seguin regional.
The winner of the Bulldogs and the Panthers will face the winner of host East Texas Baptist (38-2) and Simmons (18-32) in the winner’s bracket semifinal. Since joining the SCAC prior to the 2014 season, TLU is 34-17 all-time in the NCAA Tournament, the most wins SCAC softball history in NCAA Tournament play.
The Bulldogs, which enter the NCAA Tournament with the fifth best winning percentage in the country (.912), will be led offensively by back-to-back SCAC Player-of-the-Year in sophomore Caelee Clark and in the circle by four-time SCAC Pitcher-of-the-Year in senior Ashlyn Strother. Clark heads into NCAA Tournament action leading the country with an NCAA Div. III record and counting 84 stolen baes, while Strother carries in an 0.89 ERA, 10th best in all of Div. III.
The regional round will be held May 16-18. Four teams will compete at 15 regional sites and two teams will compete at one regional site. The team advancing from each regional will compete in the super regional round May 23 and 24. The finals, hosted by East Texas Baptist University, will be held May 30 -June 5 at Bell Park at Taylor Field in Marshall, Texas. All rounds will use a double-elimination format, and the two-team regional will play a best-of-five series.
Forty-one conferences received an automatic qualification (Pool A). One institution was selected from Pool B, which includes independent institutions and schools from conferences that do not meet the automatic qualification criteria. The 20 remaining teams were selected on an at-large basis from automatic qualifying conferences and institutions included in Pool B.
