What went down in the eighth week of college softball? The aim each week is to bring you five stories that defined the week in college softball or help navigate the long road to Oklahoma City and the Women's College World Series.
1. Michigan's Carol Hutchins stands alone
It would take something special to trump news of the nation's No. 1 team losing twice in one weekend at home. It would take, as it turns out, 1,458 wins to bump the SEC showdown between Florida and Alabama to the weekend's second story.
That large number is the career total Michigan's Carol Hutchins reached in the middle game of a Big Ten sweep at Indiana. It is one win more than former Fresno State coach Margie Wright's NCAA record that had stood since her retirement after the 2012 season.
Hutchins is softball's winningest coach. She surely already ranked as one of the best hires in the history of college sports. She was one of its best bargains. Half of her time spent doing clerical work and half coaching softball when she was hired as an assistant prior to the 1983 season and promoted to head coach two years later. She made so little money between the two sets of responsibilities that her beloved late mother used to ask her when she would get a real job.
That women's sports needed the likes of Hutchins to put up with such circumstances not so long ago is painful, but those circumstances also produced a generation of inspiring figures.
Like former Tennessee basketball coach Pat Summitt, Hutchins remained the best in the business even as that business began to attract more and more women and men with more and more resources at their disposal. Those who blaze trails are not always best equipped to thrive once society has trodden it into well-worn path. Sometimes those who do something first are necessary precursors to those who do it better. Sometimes people fill both roles.
A player who helped Michigan State compete for an Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women national title, Hutchins would argue that she wasn't first. But at least in terms of the NCAA era, she was.
She was one of the best when there were 91 Division I programs and scant exposure for them. And she is as good as any coach now that there are 289 Division I programs and a national audience for the games they play in gleaming facilities like Michigan's Alumni Field.
One of the nation's premier softball programs should not have its base in a place that is accustomed to 80 inches of snow in a given winter. But Ann Arbor is where young women like Sierra Romero still want to come for the chance to play and win for Hutchins.
So it's only fitting that Romero, the gifted, confident embodiment of the evolving female athlete, led the record-breaking weekend with a nearly perfect weekend at the plate. She came to the plate 13 times against Indiana and reached base 12 times. Three of those trips produced home runs, good enough to move her up to 12th in NCAA history with 74 career home runs.
With Romero's brilliance and the weekend sweep as only the latest evidence, Hutchins shows no signs of nearing the end of anything. This weekend was still an opportunity to stop and savor the person who for three decades has been what we too often try and pretend all coaches are.
2. Alabama takes out No. 1
The last time Alabama scored fewer runs in a three-game series on the road than it did this past weekend at Florida, it was on the wrong end of a sweep at LSU three years ago.
The Crimson Tide enjoyed a scarcity of runs a good bit more this time around. They only scored seven runs in three games in Gainesville, Florida, but they made them count for enough to beat the Gators more times than the rest of the nation had to date.
One series does not define a team. Florida lost at least one series each of the past two seasons en route to national titles. It is fair to look at that team's slugging percentage, down to what would be the lowest mark since coach Tim Walton's first two seasons, and wonder about offensive balance. But it is still a lineup that gets on base from the top to the bottom of the order. Of nine position players with at least 30 starts, eight have on-base percentages of .424 or better. That many people on base will lead to runs -- certainly more than this past weekend against Alabama's Sydney Littlejohn and Alexis Osorio, particularly the former in two great starts.
At the same time, one series is significant if it sets a standard of what is possible. For Alabama, the timely hitting that earned 2-1 and 3-0 wins was nice but not necessarily predictive of future results. What Alabama can replicate is the nearly flawless defense it produced on a lot of balls in play behind Littlejohn and Osorio. Defensively, the Tide played championship-caliber softball in getting two wins that will go a long way toward a top-eight NCAA tournament seed.
3. Present and future looking better for Bruins
If the past weekend is any indication, UCLA should be in good hands for years to come, if those hands belong to Brianna Tautalafua and are gripping a bat. Perhaps just as importantly for the future of the Bruins, home fans in Los Angeles won't have any difficulty admiring her hits.
The week's headline act in the Pac-12 belonged to the Bruins. UCLA rallied from a setback against Washington to win two out of three games at previously unbeaten-in-conference Oregon this past weekend. In the shadows earlier this season because of an ACL injury dating back to high school, Tautalafua put herself squarely in the spotlight against the Ducks. The freshman ensured UCLA's 16-6 run-rule win in the opener with a three-run home run that capped the team's scoring. And after driving in a run in a defeat in the second game, she hit two solo home runs to fuel a 4-1 win in the finale.
Another big bat is welcome news for UCLA. So were 9 2/3 quality innings from pitcher Paige McDuffee, the busiest week of the season for a redshirt junior who adds another needed arm.
Especially in the context of games played in Oregon's new stadium, UCLA's announcement Monday of a $2 million donation from Jim and Phyllis Easton -- whose last name already adorns one of college softball's iconic, if aging, venues -- cemented a banner weekend. For better or worse, the sport's growth means even the sport's longstanding flagship programs can't rely on just a trophy case to replenish talent. The new donation, which will first manifest itself in a new video replay board at Easton Stadium, is part of that process.
4. Ace up Louisiana-Lafayette's sleeve
It wasn't a perfect week for Louisiana-Lafayette, but it was a week that reinforces its credentials as a team that could get to Oklahoma City and stick around for a while. That's mostly because it was a busy week for Alex Stewart and opposing batters wearing out a path back to the dugout.
The Ragin' Cajuns maintained control of the Sun Belt with a weekend sweep against Texas State and split a higher-profile midweek doubleheader at Baylor. Along with an earlier series at home against Oregon and an upcoming trip to Florida for three games, the trip to Waco is part of a concerted effort from that the mid-major giant to give itself a chance at a top-eight seed in the NCAA tournament and home-field advantage through super regionals.
Stewart makes it easier to believe they could turn that into a trip to the World Series. It's no secret that Louisiana-Lafayette can hit, led by All-American Lexie Elkins. Yet in 27 innings against good competition this past week, including essentially both ends of the Baylor doubleheader, Stewart allowed just 19 hits, four walks and four earned runs. She is now 15-1 on the season and has lowered her ERA three quarters of a run in the past three weeks.
Louisiana-Lafayette's lineup already was the equivalent of a full house. An extra ace would make it look like a very strong hand to play in the postseason.
5. Small stages, great hitters
A lot of space has been spent this week on programs at the top of the pecking order in college softball, but the brand names don't have exclusive rights to talent.
Just ask the opposing pitchers and coaches trying to figure out what to do with McNeese State's Erika Piancastelli and North Dakota State's Logan Moreland, a pair of hitters currently leading lineups and teams that those brand names will not want to see in an NCAA tournament regional.
Start with Piancastelli, whose week began with home runs in midweek wins over Southern Miss and South Alabama. Those hits gave the sophomore six home runs in five games, further proof that last season's freshman success was no fluke. She now shares the national home run lead with Louisiana-Lafayette's Elkins -- despite Abilene Christian's best efforts to slow her trot to a walk over the weekend. Piancastelli came to the plate 13 times in that three-games series in the Southland Conference. She walked 11 times.
North Dakota State's Moreland saw more pitches to hit in a weekend series against IUPUI, but that may not happen too many more times. Moreland went 8-for-12 in the sweep and totaled three home runs, nine RBIs and four stolen bases. Few hitters have been better over the past two weeks than the senior shortstop. She is hitting .593 in the team's past eight games.