{"id":8560,"date":"2016-05-22T23:19:10","date_gmt":"2016-05-23T03:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=8560"},"modified":"2016-05-22T23:19:10","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T03:19:10","slug":"jmu-softball-advances-to-super-regionals-sweet-16-will-host-lsu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=8560","title":{"rendered":"JMU Softball Advances to Super Regionals (Sweet 16), Will Host LSU"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BMehPvwWx74\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The dominant women of JMU softball overcame a slightly shaky day in the field with more of the prodigious power they&#8217;ve shown this postseason and then ruthlessly tacked on runs late to win their first-ever NCAA Regional at Veterans Memorial Park in Harrisonburg 5-1 over fellow Virginia dreamer Longwood. With the win, the nation&#8217;s #7 overall seed advances to next weekend&#8217;s Super Regional where they&#8217;ll welcome none other than the SEC&#8217;s LSU Tigers to the Valley for a best-of-three series. The stakes couldn&#8217;t be higher as the winner of the series will advance to the Women&#8217;s College World Series in Oklahoma City the first weekend in June (which just so happens to be the Madison Alumni Conference back in the &#8216;Burg where we will definitely be for the first time just sayin&#8217;). And for anyone thinking the Dukes will be nervous against a true blue-blood of college athletics, just keep in mind the Dukes are 2-1 versus the SEC this year with wins over fellow tourney teams Auburn and Tennessee and a tight loss to Alabama. In all seriousness, a best-of-three might be the ideal format for the Dukes as we&#8217;ll take the 1-1A pitching combo of sophomore Megan Good (who didn&#8217;t allow a ball out of the infield in today&#8217;s regional final!) and senior Jailyn Ford against anyone anywhere in that format. Today&#8217;s game was fraught with huge nerves early but both pitchers were stellar throughout the first few innings. A couple of uncommon fielding miscues gave Longwood a 1-0 lead though thankfully Megan Good worked out of a jam to limit the damage. Then the power took over as Jessica Mrozek took her Daniel Murphy-esque postseason to another level with a clutch bomb (I&#8217;m talking enormous bomb) to tie the game at 1 and then Erica Field did what Erica Field does with a dinger to calm everyone&#8217;s nerves and give the Dukes the lead 2-1. After both coaches got in the umps face over an &#8220;inconsistent&#8221; strike zone the Lancers made the ill-fated decision to take out their starter and the Dukes took advantage. The bottom part of the JMU lineup went nuts in the top of the seventh (the Dukes were technically the &#8220;visitors&#8221; in the tourney in Game 1 today) with nine-hitter Hannah Hayes coming through with the Geico Insurance RBIs that gave Good all she needed to close out the Lancers. Needless to say, when the Dukes lineup produces they way they did this weekend to go with Good and Ford, us old-timers get a very &#8217;94 Field Hockey feeling about this group! (Again, just sayin&#8217;) Rob and I are almost inappropriately excited to welcome a truly worthy tailgating adversary to the &#8216;Burg next weekend in the form of the Bayou Bengals for the first time in what seems like forever. The neutral site football game versus West Virginia at FedEx was great but not since &#8217;08 App. St. have we really seen a school that forces us to break out the big guns in the form of seafood-boil pots, open-flame charcoal, and homemade liquor. LSU took out Arizona St. in their own regional today to earn the trip to the Commonwealth but for all their pedigree, we&#8217;re not really sure they understand just what kind of purple-and-gold insanity their walking into this time around. Rob will be back later this week with a full breakdown of the squirrel\/blue-crab\/Massanutten-creek-peach brandy vs. nutria\/crawfish\/homemade-absinthe craziness (and also the game haha), but suffice to say this is going to be an all-timer you don&#8217;t want to miss over the upcoming holiday weekend. Oh yeah, and the Diamond Dukes baseball squad put a hurting on Hofstra this weekend too in order to advance to the CAA Baseball tourney in Charleston in Coach Ikenberry&#8217;s first season too so we&#8217;ve got all kinds of pleasantly unexpected Dukes action still to come!<\/p>\n<iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fjmusportsblog.com%2F%3Fp%3D8560&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=true&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;height=80\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:80px;\" allowTransparency=\"true\"><\/iframe>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The dominant women of JMU softball overcame a slightly shaky day in the field with more of the prodigious power they&#8217;ve shown this postseason and then ruthlessly tacked on runs late to win their first-ever NCAA Regional at Veterans Memorial Park in Harrisonburg 5-1 over fellow Virginia dreamer Longwood. With the win, the nation&#8217;s #7 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8575,"url":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=8575","url_meta":{"origin":8560,"position":0},"title":"JMU vs. LSU Softball Super Regional, What You Need to Know","date":"May 27, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"It's a clash of the purple in the 'burg today folks. The Harrisonburg Super Regional kicks off today as JMU Softball attempts to qualify for the trip to Oklahoma City for the NCAA Softball College World Series. Here's what you need to know. What is this? It's NCAA Softball Super\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;JMU Sports&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"CjbCYV-UoAE44no","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/jmusportsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/CjbCYV-UoAE44no.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8557,"url":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=8557","url_meta":{"origin":8560,"position":1},"title":"JMU Softball In Regional Final Today!","date":"May 22, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"JMU Softball will play in the regional final for the first time in program history today at 2 p.m. in Harrisonburg against none other than an in-state Cinderella in the Longwood Lancers. Coverage available on MadiZoneHD.\u00a0More than half of the NCAA field of 64 will have been eliminated when the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;News&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"Your turn, Ms. Good!","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jmusportsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/44692044001_4245221149001_0505-JMU-MT-76905.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9261,"url":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=9261","url_meta":{"origin":8560,"position":2},"title":"Megan Good is One of the Top 10 Softball Players in the Country","date":"February 8, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"We all knew Megan Good was, well, good (sorry). That's obvious to anyone who's every seen her play. But it's not just JMU fans who are so impressed with her abilities. ESPN named Good the sixth best softball player in the country in its annual NCAA softball preview. Good is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;JMU Sports&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"JMU-VT SFB","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jmusportsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/042915-JMU-VT-SFB3-DL.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8584,"url":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=8584","url_meta":{"origin":8560,"position":3},"title":"JMU Softball Falls to LSU in Heartbreaking Super Regional","date":"May 29, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, that was as sad a day of JMU sports as we can remember since the loss to Montana in the 'o8 football semis. After winning in dramatic fashion Friday night on Jessica Mrozek's walk-off hit to take a 1-0 lead in the best of three series against LSU, JMU\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;News&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"She is turning into the GOAT!","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jmusportsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/44692044001_4245221149001_0505-JMU-MT-76905.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8550,"url":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=8550","url_meta":{"origin":8560,"position":4},"title":"JMU Softball Earns #7 National Seed in NCAA Tournament","date":"May 16, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The take-no-prisoners, anyone, anytime, anywhere JMU Softball Dukes won't actually have to worry about the \"anywhere\" part of their mantra during the next two weeks. That's because when Coach Mickey Dean's squad earned the #7 national seed overall in the NCAA Softball Tournament. In turn, that means they will not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;JMU Sports&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"softball walk off","src":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/jmusportsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/7687840_G.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8547,"url":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=8547","url_meta":{"origin":8560,"position":5},"title":"Guest Post: NCAA Softball Bracketology","date":"May 15, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Brian Hansen is our go-to guy when it comes to all things JMU and NCAA softball. Here's his quick look at how the NCAA tournament might shakeout prior to the field being announced this evening.\u00a0 So the softball Dukes cruised through the CAA Championship and I\u2019m not sure the tournament\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;JMU Sports&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8560"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8560"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8570,"href":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8560\/revisions\/8570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}