Behrend Softball Travels to New York and Seeded #7 at NCAA Northeast Regional to Battle Ithaca College
Penn
State Behrend (34-8) softball earned the league's automatic bid to the NCAA
Tournament on Sunday with a 5-0 blanking of three-time defending AMCC
champions, Pitt-Bradford on the Behrend diamond.
The blue and white were placed in the Northeast Regional as the seventh-seed and will play the second-seed and host Ithaca (35-4) first in the double-elimination regional on Thursday, May 11. The winner then advances to Friday's 2:00 p.m. winners bracket game against the winner of #3 Rensselaer (34-4) vs. #6 Elms (27-10). The loser will play the loser of game one (#5 Western Connecticut State (26-16) vs. #4 Union (29-5) on Friday at 10:00 a.m. The tournament runs Thursday through Sunday. The top team in this regional is number-one seed Plattsburgh state (37-7).
Behrend is entering its first NCAA Tournament and was one of 59 teams selected for the Division III Championship. Seven teams will compete at five first-round sites and eight teams will play at three first-round sites for a total of eight first-round sites. All first-round sites will use a double-elimination format. The finals, hosted by Peace College, will be held May 19-23 at the Walnut Creek Softball Complex in Raleigh, North Carolina. Thirty-five conferences have been granted automatic qualification and six independents were selected for the 2006 championship. The 18 remaining teams were selected on an at-large basis from automatic qualifying conferences and the remaining independent institutions.
Behrend entered Sunday's championship match-up of the AMCC double elimination tournament at 2-0, while Bradford came in at 3-1. After dropping game one to the Panthers 4-1, the Behrend Lions roared back and shut Bradford out, 5-0 to claim the title. Julie Koman (McKees Rocks/Montour) who threw a no-hitter through five and two-thirds, added another win to her impressive total. Koman pitched a complete game, one-hit shutout, striking out nine, and walking no one. The freshman star ended the game by striking out the side in the final inning. She was then named the AMCC Player of the Year, the league's Newcomer of the Year, and placed on the league's All-Conference First-Team.
Ithaca, the champions of the Empire 8
and ranked second in the Northeast region, hit .351 this season and post an
sharp team ERA of 1.09.