The Southern Conference has announced the seeding for the 2021 SoCon Softball Championship, which begins Thursday, May 13, at UNCG Softball Stadium in Greensboro, North Carolina. The four-team tournament is slated for May 13-15.
Regular-season champion UNCG (31-15, 14-4 SoCon), the coaches preseason pick to win the league, is the tournament’s top seed for the third consecutive tournament.
The Spartans needed to sweep Western Carolina this weekend to earn the top seed and they did so with a pair of 9-1 wins on Saturday and a 5-0 win on Sunday afternoon.
The first game of the double-elimination tournament, which is set for Thursday at 12:30 p.m., will feature the top-seeded Spartans and No. 4 Mercer (23-21, 8-9), who earned an appearance in the tournament by taking two of three from Furman this weekend. The winner of that game will move on to face the winner of No. 2 Western Carolina (25-24, 12-5) vs. No. 3 Chattanooga (13-23, 8-8), the 2019 SoCon Champions, who play Thursday at 3 p.m, on Friday at 12:30 p.m.
In the regular-season series’, UNCG took two of three from Mercer in Macon, Georgia, on May 1-2, while Western Carolina and Chattanooga split a pair of contests on March 28 in the rain-shortened series the first weekend of conference play.
Thursday’s slate of games will begin at 12:30 p.m. and eventually conclude with a 5:30 p.m. contest. The remaining teams will compete in a pair of games on Friday, which are scheduled for 12:30 p.m. and 3 p.m.
Saturday will feature a championship game at 1 p.m., which may be followed by a 3 p.m. contest if the early game represents the first loss of the tournament for one of the teams. All action will be broadcast on ESPN+.
2021 SoCon Softball Championship
UNCG Softball Stadium ? Greensboro, N.C.
Thursday, May 13
Game 1: No. 1 UNCG vs. No. 4 Mercer, 12:30 p.m., ESPN+
Game 2: No. 2 Western Carolina vs. No. 3 Chattanooga, 3 p.m., ESPN+
Game 3: Game 1 Loser vs. Game 2 Loser, 5:30 p.m., ESPN+
Friday, May 14
Game 4: Game 1 Winner vs. Game 2 Winner, 12:30 p.m., ESPN+
Game 5: Game 3 Winner vs. Game 4 Loser, 3 p.m., ESPN+
Saturday, May 15
Game 6: Game 4 Winner vs. Game 5 Winner, 1 p.m., ESPN+
Game 7: IF NECESSARY, 3 p.m., ESPN+
All times are Eastern.