The Wildcats are in and around the top 10 in all four polls and the RPI
Beating an RPI top 25 team like ASU twice should help any squad. It helped the Arizona Wildcats in most of the polls but not all of them.
Going into the weekend series against Arizona State, Arizona was ranked in the top 10 in all four polls but not the RPI. The lowest the Wildcats were among human voters was tied for 10th in the USA Softball poll. RPI had them at No. 13.
The Wildcats rose in three of four polls and the RPI this week, but the USA Today/NFCA poll was an outlier.
The first poll of the week is always Softball America, which comes out on Monday morning. The outlet has the Wildcats at No. 6 this week, one spot up from last week.
Like SA, the other smaller poll has typically had Arizona higher than the big polls this season. It was no different this week when D1 Softball put the Wildcats at No. 7. That was a bump of one place over last week’s ranking.
ESPN.com/USA Softball placed UA in a tie for 10th last week. Not only are the Wildcats not tied with anyone this week but they moved up to ninth.
NFCA is used on this site as the official poll, so Arizona will be listed as No. 11 this week in our articles. The coaches poll dropped them out of 10th place despite taking the series over an ASU team with two of the top 50 pitchers in the country based on the advanced pitching stat xFIP.
RPI liked the series win. While Arizona didn’t move back into the top 10, it did move up two spots to No. 11 in the NCAA’s metric.
RPI is especially important for the Wildcats since they’re fighting to get a hosting spot in the postseason right now. While the selection committee doesn’t go just by RPI, it is a pretty good indicator of who will be a top 16 national seed. Those teams will host the regional round of the postseason. The top eight will also get to host super regionals if they advance that far.
Right now, the SEC holds six of the top eight and 10 of the top 16 positions in the RPI. The ACC holds the other two in the top eight as well as the No. 9 spot. Arizona at 11 and Oklahoma State at 15 are the only two Big 12 teams in the top 16.
UCLA at No. 13 is the only team in the top 16 out of the Big Ten. That doesn’t help the Wildcats, who beat UCLA during the nonconference season. Both Arizona and UCLA have had difficulties with RPI since conference season started, although it hasn’t only been about their conference opponents. Losses by teams they played in the non-conference season also affect them.
Arizona was ranked fourth on Mar. 2 when the first official RPI came out. UCLA was ranked seventh. The lack of top-level competition in their leagues relative to the SEC is hurting both. That will only snowball as SEC teams play each other and help bump their opponents’ RPI up. Losses won’t hurt as much in that league as a result. Realignment means that Arizona and UCLA no longer have the kind of advantage that the Pac-12 provided and that the SEC enjoys at an even larger scale now.
Arizona head coach Caitlin Lowe and her staff are keeping an eye on RPI already. They start looking at it as soon as it comes out. It’s not just about this year, either.
“We’re already scheduling 2026 so I’m constantly looking at how different scheduling affects other teams, too, and how those teams at the top stay at the top, and what kind of mix works to kind of get that perfect equation,” Lowe said. “And it’s a lot. It’s a lot of math. And at the same time, I think we’ve gotten better at it every year. As far as the scheduling goes, it’s hard. It’s hard to get the good teams here. It’s hard to have the budget to travel when we need to, and so it’s a constant thing. But you know, I thought [assistant coach Lauren Lappin] did a great job of connecting with teams to get really big names into our stadium this year. We were lucky with some scheduling as far as going to the Judi Garman and getting big-name teams there.”
Rankings across the Big 12
Softball America: Arizona (7), Texas Tech (13), Oklahoma State (15)
D1 Softball: Arizona (8), Oklahoma State (13), Texas Tech (16), Arizona State (25)
USA Softball: Arizona (9), Texas Tech (13), Oklahoma State (15), Arizona State (RV/31)
NFCA: Arizona (11), Texas Tech (14), Oklahoma State (17), Arizona State (RV/33)
RPI: Arizona (11), Oklahoma State (15), Texas Tech (19), Arizona State (24), UCF (33), BYU (38), Houston (44), Kansas (63), Iowa State (70), Baylor (74), Utah (104)
Lead photo by Ryan Kelapire