Upstate Softball Ranked No. 21/24 in National Top 25 Polls
5/6/2014 12:00:00 AM | Softball
USA Today/NFCA Poll | ESPN.com/USA Softball Poll
Spartanburg, S.C. – Finishing the regular season with a three-game sweep at ETSU, the USC Upstate softball team moved up two spots in the USA Today/NFCA Top 25 poll to No. 21 and remained at No. 24 in the ESPN.com/USA Softball Top 25 poll, both of which were released on Tuesday.
Upstate stands 44-5 on the season and owns the nation's second-best record. The Spartans won the A-Sun regular season championship with a 22-2 league mark and will enter this week's A-Sun Championship as the #1 seed and with a first round bye. Upstate will open tournament play Thursday afternoon at 12:30 against the winner of the game between #4 Mercer and #5 Kennesaw State.
In addition to the national rankings, CollegeSportsMadness.com has the Spartans ranked No. 15 in its poll, while Anna Miller was named the national pitcher of the week by the college sports blog site.
Upstate picked up more votes to strengthen its hold on a Top 25 national ranking in both polls. The Spartans improved from 101 votes last week to garner 144 in this week's NFCA poll, moving up two positions to No. 21. They are sandwiched between Notre Dame (187) and Auburn (116) in the poll. Upstate received 44 votes in the USA Softball poll last week and picked up 12 more votes to stay at No. 24 this week. The Spartans are sandwiched between LSU (70) and Texas A&M (22) in the poll.
Upstate has now been ranked in both major Top 25 polls for five straight weeks and six overall this season, both of which are program records.
Miller earned national pitcher of the week honors from CollegeSportsMadness.com after tossing a pair of shutouts with 28 strikeouts last week at ETSU. She tossed a no-hitter in the series finale on Sunday a day after she struck out 18 Saturday, tying the Upstate single-game school record.
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