Gopher Softball Wins Big Ten Tournament, Heads to Seattle for NCAA Regional

Over the weekend Minnesota made a run to the Big Ten Tournament beating Illinois on Friday and Northwestern early on Saturday setting up a showdown with top-seeded Michigan.

The Gophers were hot, coming into the Big Ten Tourney as the 2nd seed and having won 11 straight games.  Michigan is currently the #2 team in the country and was the regular season Big Ten champs.  The title game was tight and went into extra innings tied 3-3.

In the bottom of the 10th inning with Minnesota's Sam Macken on first and Sydney Fabian on second, sophomore second baseman Danielle Parlich hit a ground ball toward short stop when a Michigan fielding error allowed Fabian to round the bases and score the game-winning run.

A run, a Big Ten title, a win over Michigan and an automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament.  Junior pitcher Sara Groenewegen was named the Tournament's Most Outstanding Player with Maddie Houlihan (FR) and Sam Macken (JR) also earning All-Tournament honors.

Moving on to the NCAA Tournament...the Gophers have made the tournament for the 4th straight year and will travel to Seattle where they will face NDSU on Thursday.  Host Washington is the tournament's 11th overall seed and actually defeated the Gophers 7-2 early in the season on Valentine's Day.  But game 1 is NDSU who won the Summit League.

Stay tuned as we will closely follow the Gophers as they hopefully make a run to the Super Regional.