CLAIRE C. LAURENCE/Arizona Daily Wildcat UA outfielder Autumn Champion

Pac-10 softball teams dominate national polls once again

There are other conferences in college softball besides the Pac-10. They just don't matter.

The World Series may be in Oklahoma City, but the road to the national championship will run through the Pacific 10 Conference. In 20 of the 22 years there has been an NCAA title, at least one Pac-10 team has been in the championship game.

For example, defending national champion UCLA started the season No. 1 but has gone 2-5 in league play. The Bruins are second-to-last in the conference but still sit in the top five in the country. A couple weeks ago, the Bruins were last in the Pac-10 and ranked No. 2 in the country.

"The Pac-10 as a conference is the best conference in the country, and every team goes into the Pac-10 with a very high winning percentage," said UA acting associate head coach Nancy Evans. "Afterwards, they get all their losses because we beat up on each other, but it only makes us better."

CLAIRE C. LAURENCE/Arizona Daily Wildcat UCLA outfielder Stephanie Ramos

Four of the top five teams in the country ÷ No. 1 Arizona (43-1, 7-0 Pac-10), No. 3 UCLA (29-6, 2-5), No. 4 California (37-8, 4-5) and No. 5 Washington (30-8, 6-1) ÷ hail from the Pac-10. At No. 10, Stanford (34-11, 5-4) makes five conference representatives in the top 10, and the Oregon schools both sit in the top 16 as well. Arizona State (30-21, 0-7) was ranked before Pac-10 play began.

"I haven't seen another sport in the Pac-10 compare to softball," said UA acting head coach Larry Ray. "At the beginning of the year, all eight teams being in the top 25 says a lot. It's head and shoulders above everything I've seen. I don't know what I compare it to."

Last year, Cal and UCLA vied for the national title, marking the 10th time two Pac-10 teams have played in the relatively short history of the tournament.

The Bears and Wildcats played for the championship the year before.

"The Pac-10 is a really strong conference because not only do you have great hitters, but you have great pitching in an area where softball is top quality, so it is good for lots of reasons," said senior utility player Wendy Allen, who is 8-0 as a pitcher and leads the nation in batting at .484.

Though UCLA and Arizona are traditional powerhouses, the rise of the Bay area and Oregon schools has made the region even tougher.

Ray said last week's opponents, the Northern California schools, and this week's foes, the Oregon schools, "have made tremendous strides."

"When I look at facing those teams on consecutive weekends, it is tough. I'm sure glad we have the team that we have, because I think that we are able to combat that a little better than some others," Ray said. "It's, gosh, one tough chore after another."

Arizona didn't lose to the Beavers in the 1990s ÷ they outscored OSU 38-0 in four games during the 1995 season ÷ and once beat Stanford 25-0. In 1994, Stanford went 0-22, in 1995 OSU went 0-24, and most recently, Oregon went 1-20 in 2001 and 2-19 in 2002.

Evans said the Oregon Trail has always been tough, even if fans hadn't noticed.

"They've been good for a while. They've just been overlooked within the Pac-10 because they've been in the bottom of the bunch," Evans said. "This year, they've been upsetting people in the Pac-10 and people are finally starting to take notice. Having played them for years, I know that they've been good and competitive every year and underrated."

Last year, the Conference of Champions had 16 players earn All-America honors, including eight who made First Team.

Last year, the league sent all eight teams to the NCAA tournament ÷ the fifth year in a row that the league had seven or more teams in the regionals and four teams in the World Series.

"If you look at the last few years, there are eight regionals across the country and the past five or eight years, just about every Pac-10 team has gone to a regional. No other conference in the country can say that," Evans said.

Since the start of the NCAA softball championships in 1982, a Pac-10 team has won 17 times and been a runner-up 13 times.

Allen, who transferred to the UA after being named Big Ten Freshman of the Year and Big Ten Player of the Year at Ohio State, said she wasn't surprised at how good the conference was.

"I grew up in southern California, played against all these girls, so I was expecting it to be exactly what it was: so very strong," Allen said.

So, just how strong is the Pac-10? On Tuesday, UA freshman centerfielder Caitlin Lowe was named national Player of the Week. But that wasn't good enough for the Pac-10 to give her its Player of the Week honor. The conference didn't even consider her the best Caitlin in the league ÷ that was UCLA sophomore Caitlin Benyi, this week's Pac-10 Player of the Week.