It’s almost that time of year when people are getting ready to watch some postseason softball in the NCAA softball tournament. One of the questions that’s most often asked when it comes to this tournament is “how many teams make the NCAA softball tournament?”
The reason why this can be a point that confuses people is because the NCAA softball tournament is set up differently than other tournaments are and it can lead to some confusion.
How many teams make the NCAA softball tournament?
The NCAA softball tournament, like the NCAA baseball tournament is set up so that the teams are divided into 16 pods called regionals. Each of those regionals have four teams that all face off against each other in what is essentially a four-team double elimination tournament.
The winner of the regionals then advance to what is really the second round of the tournament but pares down the 64 teams to 16. These are called super regionals and they are hosted by the the Top 8 seeds in the tournament if they all make it to the second round, or the top eight seeds left if they don’t.
These super regionals take those 64 teams that were already pared down to 16 and once again, are a smaller double-elimination tournament. The winners of the super regionals then advance to the Women’s College World Series, which is, unsurprisingly, yet another double-elimination tournament of the final eight teams.
Because of the format, this tournament can take quite a while to finish each round, but it certainly does a better job of making sure the teams that win really and truly deserve to win.