https://www.on3.com/softball/news/softball-to-seed-32-teams-for-2026-ncaa-tournament/
NCAA will seed the top 32 teams next year, as opposed to just the top 16
After multiple years of discussion, NCAA softball will follow the footsteps of Women’s Volleyball & Women’s Soccer, seeding 32 teams. This does not change the 16 national seeds, but should help reward the top seeds with ‘easier’ matchups.
The seeding will not be a straight 1-32 matchup to allow the NCAA to protect the 400-mile geographic proximity parameters when possible and prevent conference matchups in regionals. The seeding will use ‘buckets’. The 1-4 national seeds will face the 29-32 seeds in a certain order that allows the committee to still use the past parameters. If there are three SEC teams in the top four, and one SEC team in the 29-32 bucket, the SEC team will face the non-SEC host essentially.
The Buckets
National Seeds 1,2,3,4 – 29, 30, 31, 32
National Seeds 5, 6, 7, 8 – 25, 26, 27, 28
National Seeds 9, 10, 11, 12 – 21, 22, 23, 24
National Seeds 13, 14, 15, 16 – 17, 18, 19, 20
If done last year, Texas would have had a #2 seed like Virginia (#27) in their regional, instead of #31 (UCF). #1 aggy would have had #32 Arizona State, instead of #26 Liberty
Not huge differences, tbh