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Date Posted: 07:57:43 05/13/02 Mon
Author: Jon Ralston
Subject: Tigers in tough bracket

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Originally Published Monday, May 13, 2002
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Tigers' region filled with Top-10 teams

The Record

When Brian Kolze says his University of the Pacific softball team is in the toughest regional in the country for the 2002 NCAA Division I Tournament, there probably isn't a soul in the land who would disagree with him.

The Tigers on Sunday were selected to play in Regional 4 in Fresno. The 17th-ranked team in the nation is the fifth seed in the six-team regional. The Tigers (42-15) are joined by No. 5 Cal (48-19), No. 8 Stanford (43-18), No. 9 Cal State Fullerton (50-11) and No. 14 Fresno State (49-18). Sixth-seeded Evansville (34-25) is the only team in Regional 4 that wasn't ranked in the final regular-season Top 25.

''Without a doubt, we're in the absolute toughest region in the country top to bottom,'' said Kolze, who went on to explain why his glass is half full. ''We're in. We're playing in the toughest region in the country, but there are a lot of teams that didn't get in.''

Pacific will play Stanford in the second game Thursday. Top-seeded Cal State Fullerton will meet Evansville in the first game, and third-seeded Cal meets fourth-seeded Fresno State in the third game.

The Tigers and Cardinal have done this before. Stanford defeated Pacific in a regional final at Stanford last season to earn a berth in the College World Series in Oklahoma City. The Tigers will open with Stanford next season. And they played two on Feb. 9 at Bill Simoni Field. Stanford swept a doubleheader 2-1 in nine innings and 8-2.

Pacific went 2-1 against Cal State Fullerton, even though the Titans went on to win the Big West Conference championship, 1-0 against Cal and 0-2 against Fresno State.

''That's a lot of games we've played against these people,'' Kolze said. ''They're ready to roll. The plus side of it is, our kids know where we're going. We don't have to change our finals schedule; we can wait until after finals Wednesday before we leave. They can remove a lot of those variables before we play on Thursday.

''We're excited. It's great to still be playing.''

Other top seeds are top-ranked UCLA (50-6) in Regional 1 in Columbia, S.C.; Arizona (48-10) in Regional 2 in Minneapolis; LSU (53-9) in Regional 3 in Lafayette, La.; Texas (46-11) in Regional 5 in Norman, Okla.; Washington (43-16) in Regional 6 in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Nebraska (45-12) in Regional 7 in Iowa City, Iowa; and Florida Atlantic (59-11) in Regional 8 in Tallahassee, Fla.

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