ASC Tournament Changes

I put part of this note in my Wrap-Up but only after it had been out for a few hours. The ASC has decided to change up their ASC Tournament both in which teams qualify and the format. I mentioned in the Wrap-Up that they no longer are taking the top 3 teams in each division but will now take the top 2 teams and have two wildcard spots, if you will. The two wildcard spots will go to the team with the best conference winning percentage regardless of what division they play in. In addition, I learned this morning that the ASC has also moved away from double-elimination and gone to the more traditional single-elimination format.

As part of an article I wrote last year (Playing a New England Schedule) I had some suggestions on how to improve the West Region SOS numbers. One of those suggestions was for the ASC to remove the double-elimination tournament. The problem was that the ASC typically didn’t have 6 teams with records higher than 0.600 and playing them twice almost guaranteed that your SOS would take a dip. Now, the ASC has gone a step further by making sure that the best teams in conference also make the tournament, which is also a really good move. On the flip side, since the two divisions don’t play the same conference schedule this move can be a little unfair to the tougher of the two divisions. With that said, it was usually the tougher division that got shorted in the old format and now they have a chance to play for a tournament spot.

Now, I was told that the ideas came from the conference’s softball coaches and not anything I wrote and I’m certainly fine with that. After all, it’s not important for me to get the credit here. Just knowing that the softball coaches read my articles is joy enough for me.