In a season that has been anything but ordinary for Missouri softball, the No. 14 seed Tigers face a do-or-die matchup against 11th-seeded Ole Miss in the opening round of the Southeastern Conference Tournament on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Typically for Mizzou, the SEC Tournament is just a stepping stone \u2014 it\u2019s the NCAA Tournament that concludes the season.<\/p>\n
However, with a 25-30 record heading into the conference tournament, the Tigers\u2019 fate ahead of Sunday\u2019s NCAA Tournament Selection Show is anything but certain.<\/p>\n
A Division I school has to have played a minimum number of events (27 games in softball) and have at least a .500 record to qualify for selection as an at-large team in an NCAA championship event. All conference tournament games count toward a program\u2019s minimum number of events.<\/p>\n
In order to reach .500, Mizzou would need to win the SEC Tournament \u2014 something it has never done. But the Tigers haven\u2019t been far off.<\/p>\n
Mizzou has made the SEC Tournament final two of the last three years, falling to No. 2 seed Florida in 2024 and losing to top-seeded Arkansas in 2022. MU was seeded fifth and seventh, respectively, in those tournaments.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe game doesn\u2019t care what seed you are,\u201d MU coach Larissa Anderson said following the team\u2019s regular-season finale, a 1-0 victory over No. 24 Georgia on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The Tigers will face Ole Miss for the fourth time this season, having previously lost two of three games in a series in Oxford, Mississippi. The Rebels swept a doubleheader to open the series March 30, but the Tigers salvaged a 9-5 win a day later.<\/p>\n
Tuesday\u2019s game will start 35 minutes after the first game of the tournament concludes. First pitch between No. 12 seed Georgia and 13th-seeded Kentucky is slated for noon.<\/p>\n
Mizzou comes into the matchup riding the momentum of its first SEC series victory of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re playing to win,\u201d junior pitcher Cierra Harrison said. \u201cWe have nothing to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a season that has been anything but ordinary for Missouri softball, the No. 14 seed Tigers face…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,5190,5189,5183,231,772,5187,5192,5193,5188,5194,1544,5184,1117,5182,5185,5186,66,5191],"class_list":{"0":"post-12699","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-former-southern-conference-teams","11":"tag-former-southern-intercollegiate-athletic-association-teams","12":"tag-missouri-tigers","13":"tag-ncaa","14":"tag-ncaa-basketball","15":"tag-ncaa-division-i","16":"tag-ncaa-division-i-conferences","17":"tag-ncaa-division-i-fbs-football","18":"tag-ncaa-division-i-fbs-football-teams","19":"tag-ncaa-division-i-men","20":"tag-ncaab","21":"tag-ole-miss-rebels-football","22":"tag-southeastern-conference","23":"tag-southeastern-conference-baseball-tournament","24":"tag-southeastern-conference-football","25":"tag-southeastern-conference-teams","26":"tag-sports","27":"tag-university-of-missouri"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}