it’s time for the Elite Eight to take the softball field Thursday

Nothing slows the annual NCAA national Division I softball tournament down, and just like that, it’s World Series time.

Day one at the picturesque USA Hall of Fame OGE Stadium in Oklahoma City begins Thursday morning with a doubleheader and winds on down to a pair of night games as the Elite Eight arrives with five seeded teams and three unseeded. It’s not that the unseeds, Arizona, Texas and Oregon State are below the ranks of top-seeded Oklahoma, No. 5 UCLA, No. 7 Oklahoma State, No. 9 Northwestern, and No. 14 Florida, it’s just the way the final national rankings and seedings were laid out for the 64-school field.

All of the double-elimination openers could be tight games, others might be runaways. These are all teams with strong pitching, solid hitting, quality fielding, smart baserunning, and big-time coaching. Mistakes could be costly, but at this stage of the game on the sport’s biggest stage, these teams should arrive prepared.

From 30 miles south of the venue comes the Sooners from Norman. They are a remarkable 54-2 and open against No. 9 Northwestern (45-11), the lone Big Ten entry, in game two of day one. From not much further north of the venue in between, are the Cowgirls of the Big 12 and they post a 46-12 overall mark and complete opening day at around 9:30under the lights versus 38-20 Arizona. And from the Longhorn state comes Texas (43-19) for the initial time at this level.

In between is game one featuring UCLA (48-8), winner of a record 11 national championships (the one in 1995 was removed), and will meet up with a chilli-hot Texas team that is one of the three Big 12 clubs that have won 6-of-6 starts in the Super Regionals. It was the unseeded Longhorns in fact that are one of the two teams to defeat the defending champion Sooners, Texas back in Austin, 4-2, and OSU back in Norman, 5-4, which shows the present strength of the Big 12.

It is joined by the PAC-12’s trio of the Bruins, Wildcats and Beavers, and then there’s one each from the Southeastern Conference in the 14-seeded Gators, and Northwestern. While the Wildcats made it in over the likes over Michigan, Illinois, Purdue and Nebraska, Florida (48-17) did so against conference quality teams in Alabama, Auburn, and Florida State, last year’s finalist that lost in the best-of-three series versus Oklahoma.

Virginia Tech of the Atlantic Coast Conference had been the 3rd-seed, but were ousted by the Gators. Duke of the ACC was seeded 11th before being knocked out back-to-back against UCLA. And in the PAC-12, Stanford was right up there before losing twice to Oregon State (39-20) in the Super Regionals it hosted at home. Princeton had been the lone Ivy League representative and Villanova the lone entry from the Big East.

So now it’s down to eight. The Sooners are in quest of their sixth national title, Arizona number nine, and Florida its third.

The longest rides in distance spread out from the far west’s Oregon State and UCLA, to Florida from Gainesville and much nearer to Oklahoma City comes Arizona from Tempe.

THURSDAY, JUNE 2ND —

NCAA DIVISION I SOFTBALL WORLD SERIES at OGE ENERGY FIELD

at THE USA SOFTBALL HALL OF FAME STADIUM IN OKLAHOMA CITY:

Game 1 — 10 a.m.       (5) UCLA (48-8) Versus TEXAS (43-19)                                    on ESPN

Game 2 — 2:30 p.m.   (1) OKLAHOMA (54-2) Versus (9) NORTHWESTERN (45-11) on ESPN

Game 3 — 7 p.m.       (14) FLORIDA (48-17) Versus OREGON STATE (39-20)            on ESPN

Game 4 — 9:30 p.m.    (7) OKLAHOMA STATE (46-12) Versus ARIZONA (38-20)      on ESPN