Gopher Softball Enters NCAA Tournament With Plenty Of Momentum
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- The Gophers softball team has won 14 games in a row. But the pursuit of number 15 will be their most important.
Minnesota opens up the NCAA Tournament on Friday in Seattle, with a game against North Dakota State. After beating No. 2 Michigan in 10 innings on Saturday to win the Big Ten Tournament in dramatic fashion, the Gophers are riding a wave of momentum.
"I beat the ground ball, so I didn't see it hit off of her. Coach just yelled, 'Get up, go! And so I just started sprinting as hard as I could," Sydney Fabian said. "Really surreal, having all my teammates run at me. It was the coolest thing I've ever done and probably ever will do."
To win a game that way, over the No. 2 team in the country to win a conference championship, if there's something in softball that would give your team a bigger lift than that, the Gophers aren't aware of it. And with the NCAA Tournament starting Friday, the timing for a big lift couldn't be better.
"I think that we can carry momentum through the week, and that win should give us confidence, and I think that's huge, and that's huge to show people around the country that we can beat top-10 teams," Fabian said. "We proved that we can do it and we're really excited about it, and I feel like we're more confident than we ever have been."
"We're really confident right now and we're confident going into regionals. We're going to be facing some really good teams in Washington, but we know we can beat them," Sara Groenewegen said. "I think that's the biggest thing, just going into the weekend knowing that we can beat anyone, ultimately, in the country."
"We are playing our best softball, and we're really prepared," Fabian said.
