The Utah Utes softball team had a relaxed Sunday afternoon one wouldn’t think indicative of a team waiting to see where it would fall as an at-large team in the NCAA Softball Championship tournament.
At the sprawling home of a Utah softball alumna in North Salt Lake, members of the team enjoyed some pickleball, indoor basketball and root beer floats about an hour before the selection show started. As 5 p.m. got closer, they gathered into a theater room to await their fate.
The Utes packed together on plush leather seats as they watched, at times cheering for teams that weren’t their own. Then, the announcers called their name.
The Utes will face South Carolina at 10 a.m. MT on Friday for the NCAA Regionals. They will play in Durham, North Carolina.
“Seeing your name is all that matters,” coach Amy Hogue said. “It doesn’t matter where we go.”
The team erupted in cheers when Utah’s name came on the screen. When their opponent was revealed, some players started saying “rematch” to one another.
The Utes lost 9-1 to the Gamecocks back in February in the sixth game of the season during a tournament in Mexico. They were such a different team then that Hogue doesn’t remember much more about that game other than the result.
“I think the first time we played them, we didn’t have the best game and we also were kind of struggling to find our identity as a team at the time,” pitcher Mariah Lopez said. “We’re nowhere near the same team that we were at the beginning of season that we are now. So I think we’re really excited to get a chance to show them who the Utes are.”
Utah won the Pac-12 Tournament last year by upsetting UCLA. It then hosted the Regional and Super Regional rounds of the tournament in front of record crowds. But their fairytale run ended with back-to-back losses in a doubleheader.
The Utes go into the 2024 tournament with a 34-20 record. Despite an uneven start to the season, they’ve won 13 of their last 16 games.
Haley Denning said the season turned around for Utah after losing two of three games in a series against Oregon State about three weeks ago. She said the team realized that if it didn’t get going soon, they might not make the tournament.
“I think it added an extra little fire under our butts this year to kind of keep it going and make [the] season go as long as possible,” Denning said.
