Kansas softball left out of NCAA Tournament field

By Henry Greenstein May 12, 2024

KU's Aynslee Linduff (39) and coach Jennifer McFalls share a moment Saturday, March 30, 2024, at Arrocha Ballpark.

The Kansas softball team was not picked for the 64-team field of the 2024 NCAA Tournament, which was announced Sunday evening.

The Jayhawks closed the Big 12 Conference tournament with their highest win total of head coach Jennifer McFalls’ tenure at 28-25-1, and vastly exceeded their previous success in league play by winning 11 conference games, compared to 10 combined in the past three seasons. They were also ranked in the top 25 at times during the year.

McFalls pointed out after KU’s league-tournament run ended with a 10-1 loss to Oklahoma in Oklahoma City that the Jayhawks have rarely even been in the conversation for postseason participation in years past.

KU hurt its chances in late April, finishing the year by losing 11 of its final 12 games, and particularly damaged its postseason prospects by suffering a series sweep against BYU and midweek loss to Kansas City, both at home at Arrocha Ballpark.

BYU ended up as one of the first four teams out of the field, along with Texas Tech, according to the ESPN2 broadcast of the NCAA’s selection show. BYU finished the season one spot ahead of KU in the NCAA’s RPI rankings, while Texas Tech was an additional nine spots higher.

Five teams from the Big 12 ended up making the tournament, including three of the top five overall seeds in regular-season champion No. 1 Texas, conference-tournament champion No. 2 Oklahoma (the three-team reigning national champion) and No. 5 Oklahoma State. Baylor and UCF (which was actually below Texas Tech in RPI) are also in the field.

One additional path to the postseason for college softball teams closed late last week when the National Invitational Softball Championship — an NIT-like event for softball, run by the same operator as the WNIT — announced on Friday that it will not hold its annual competition this season, citing a lack of “sufficient team demand” in a press release that also stated, “The current financial structure behind NCAA women’s sports and in particular softball does not adequately provide the financial means for the teams to cover their portion of this event.”

The future of that tournament is now uncertain. KU went to the semifinals of the NISC following the 2022 season.

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Written By Henry Greenstein

Henry is the sports editor at the Lawrence Journal-World and KUsports.com, and serves as the KU beat writer while managing day-to-day sports coverage. He previously worked as a sports reporter at The Bakersfield Californian and is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis (B.A., Linguistics) and Arizona State University (M.A., Sports Journalism). Though a native of Los Angeles, he has frequently been told he does not give off "California vibes," whatever that means.