Arizona softball projected to be No. 3 overall seed in NCAA Tournament

If the regular season ended today, the Arizona softball team’s road to Oklahoma City would go through Tucson and only Tucson.

Softball America projects the Wildcats as the No. 3 overall seed in its latest projections, which were updated Monday.

Arizona’s hypothetical regional consists of Texas Tech, UNLV and BYU. If the Wildcats were to advance from that group, they would likely host the No. 14 seed—which is Northwestern in this case—in Super Regionals.

While obtaining the No. 3 overall seed would be fantastic, the ultimate goal is to fall somewhere in the top eight since that’s how many teams host Super Regionals.

The Wildcats are clearly in good shape to be in that range, but there is still some work to be done in the last two weeks of the season when they face No. 4 Washington (at home) and No. 2 UCLA (on the road).

Both opponents are so highly ranked that Arizona’s RPI will not take a big hit whether it wins or loses those games, but it’s still possible for UA to fall outside the top eight if, say, it goes 1-5 or 0-6 in its last six games.

So...let’s not do that.