SEC teams dominate the first two weeks of collegiate softball season

The GIST: Speaking of hot squads, one conference has taken NCAA softball by storm in the first two weeks of the season: the SEC. Turning on that Southern charm.

The context: While former Big 12 juggernaut Oklahoma has been college softball’s It Girls for more than a decade, the SEC has been the most broadly talented conference as of late. But this summer, Oklahoma (and fellow Women’s College World Series regular Texas) dumped the Big 12 to join the SEC, taking the group head and shoulders above the rest of the field.

The latest: As of yesterday’s poll drop, the conference owns a whopping 13 squads in the top 25. The next-best conference? The ACC with just four. Even more mind-blowing, though, is the top of that list: SEC squads make up eight of the top 10. Holy cannoli.

• What’s more, just 12 Division I teams remain undefeated…and seven are in the SEC. If they can keep winning at this clip, they’ll set themselves up for absolutely cutthroat conference play starting up in a few weeks.

Up next: No. 7 Tennessee, No. 10 Arkansas, and No. 22 Missouri will fight to maintain SEC dominance in one of the early season’s most storied tourneys, the Mary Nutter College Classic, which hits the diamond tomorrow.

• Blue-blood No. 4 UCLA, a new member of the Big Ten, is in the running for that tournament, but one thing’s for sure: The road to the Women’s College World Series runs through the Southeast.