Guest Post: CAA Softball Tourney Preview

Brian Hansen is back with another guest post about JMU’s juggernaut of a softball program. The ladies finished the regular season 43-4. Here Brian breaks down phase 1 of the postseason, the CAA tourney. 

At the start of this season, I wrote about how I thought this could be a special team and that they could have a special year. I mentioned that Oklahoma City and the College World Series was a goal for this team, but even I did not expect this team to go out there and claim a top 10 ranking and go 43-4 against a really tough schedule. I had high expectations for this team and yet they still managed to exceed them. This team is doing something special and I’m excited that we’ve finally reached the postseason and Coach Dean and his team can start their run.

That run starts this week in Harrisonburg as JMU has earned the right to host the Colonial Athletic Association tournament for the third consecutive year. This is the season I’d say where JMU is the most heavily favored. In 2014, Charleston had already beaten JMU twice and Hofstra was a top 40 RPI team. Last year, Hofstra was a top 20 RPI team and ended up winning the tournament because they were really good.

So this year, I don’t believe there is one team that threatens JMU’s chances by itself, but the tournament is deeper than in year’s past and that depth could be JMU’s challenge. For one, the CAA has expanded the tournament to five teams instead of four. This doesn’t make a ton of difference to the tournament itself, except that it adds an extra day long and that JMU will have the advantage of playing a team that already had to play a game in the tournament. All five teams this week fall in the top 120 of the RIP, with Elon as the only one lower than 79. Coincidentally, Elon is the only CAA team to knock off JMU this year and because of the strength of Kayla Caruso in the circle, will be capable of beating anyone this week. Towson has a deep lineup, Delaware is solid across the board, but not particularly spectacular anywhere and Charleston is a bit erratic, but can put together the best single game of any of these teams not named JMU.

So I expect JMU to have to earn it by coming out and playing its best softball to win the tournament. Fortunately, the Dukes have a pair of All-Americans in the circle which gives the advantage of all of the other teams every game.

As for the awards banquet, I’m not sure when they will be announcing the awards, but I feel pretty comfortable making the following predictions:

CAA Player of the Year: Jailyn Ford

CAA Pitcher of the Year: Megan Good

CAA Defensive Player of the Year: Erica Field

CAA Coach of the Year: Mickey Dean

Most of my confidence comes from those four winning those awards the year before and doing nothing this year to dissuade me from believing they’ll do it again. Towson’s Shelby Stracher and Elon’s Kara Shutt both have good arguments for Player of the Year against Ford, but I don’t think either will win for two reasons. 1) Both of those teams played far easier schedules than JMU and JMU had far more success than either of them against tougher opponents. 2) Jailyn Ford was the most feared hitter in the CAA this year. She walked 42 times this year, including 20 times in CAA play. Teams did not want to pitch to her when the game was on the line.