To be honest, my first thought was “entered the transfer portal.”
Good for her. Certainly deserved.
While it is true that some girls transfer out of one school to attend another, it is much less common than for guys. If you recall last year the only Louisiana girls in the portal were those who had already been dismissed from the team for various reasons.
Considering the closeness of this group of girls among themselves, the coaches and the fans, and further considering our success this year and prospects for even more success in the next 2-3 years, it is very unlikely that we lose any girl who played a significant role this year.
The money doesn't flow to girls like it does to guys, and no school is going to risk an NCAA investigation for tampering to get even an All-American female athlete, especially in a non-revenue sport.
Conventional wisdom:
Keep the g5 out of playoffs in favor of mediocre p5s often with losing records in conference.
Also conventional wisdom:
Pretend we care by giving the g5 "extra" slots on various award teams and say see we don't keep them out (although it is just so we can put those players on p5 transfer portal radars)e
The thing about conventional wisdom is that it is rarely conventional and almost never wise.
At least this year [in softball] no G5 was excluded from the NCAA Tournament for arbitrary reasons; and the only G5 that possibly should have hosted was Louisiana, and we didn't get hosed on that front as badly as a P5 [Baylor].
There isn't a college softball coach in the country who didn't know who Mihyia Davis, or for that matter Lauren Allred, is well before Ms. Davis was placed on the AA team. If someone is coming for Mihyia, they didn't decide to do so because some sportswriters put her on an AA team.
One additional observation. In softball, Louisiana is not just another G5 program, we are an ELITE program which happens to be in the perennially highest rated G5 conference in the country. Even with the disadvantages of being a "G5 school", Louisiana is ranked by D1 Softball as the 19th best program in Division 1. We have been in every NCAA Tournament in this century; we have reached at least the Regional Championship game for 15 consecutive tournaments; we have nearly 1900 wins as a program; we have as many NCAA WCWS appearances as Northwestern, Texas or LSU, and more than Georgia or Baylor.
Girls who leave here for a 'better program' have a very small pool of more attractive alternatives.
"rarely conventional and almost never wise"....pretty much describes any post from RW&B...
Well, TSAB is coming after one of our freshmen with NIL money.
If that is true [and I acknowledge that it may well be], it is tampering and is an NCAA violation. Not that the NCAA will do anything about it, but it is clearly a violation to offer money to a student athlete to transfer from a school to which they are already contractually obligated. They can certainly legally offer money, but it cannot be tied to a transfer obligation.
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