SAN DIEGO – The San Diego State softball team will host the Mountain West Tournament this week and look to earn its third consecutive Mountain West Tournament title.
SDSU (33-16, 16-6) locked up the second seed in the six-team postseason tournament and a bye last week with a home sweep of San Jose State. The tournament is being held for just the third time since 2006 with the winning team earning the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. Regular-season champions Nevada (40-12, 18-4) are the top seed and have already taken a spot in the double-elimination portion of the tournament along with the Aztecs. The remaining four teams: No. 3 seed Fresno State (34-18, 15-7), No. 4 seed Boise State (33-20, 11-11), No. 5 seed Utah State (26-25, 11-11) and No. 6 seed San Jose State (22-27, 9-13) will play each other in elimination games on Wednesday for the right to face the Aztecs or Wolf Pack in the next round.
San Diego State will open its competition at 6 p.m. PT on Thursday night against the winner of third-seeded Fresno State and sixth-seeded San Jose State. Overall, there are two games each on Wednesday and Thursday, three games on Friday and one (two if necessary) on Saturday.
The last two years, SDSU ran through the MW Tournament as a top two seed, winning all six games by a combined score of 39-9. The Aztecs went 3-0 to win the Los Angeles Regional in 2023 but came up a game shy of the Women’s College World Series in the Salt Lake City Super Regional. Last season, SDSU fell in the Los Angeles Regional.
The postseason tournament was held from 2000-06 with all six teams in the conference playing for a spot in the NCAA tournament. The Aztecs were the top seed three times and the second seed once during that stretch and made five out of the seven championship games but were never able to bring home a title. Former conference members Utah (four) and Brigham Young (two) combined for all but one of those championships with the lone remaining title going to Colorado State in 2003. From 2007-2022, the regular-season champion of the Mountain West earned the league’s bid to the NCAA Tournament and there was not a conference tournament held.
Last season’s regular-season champion, the Aztecs are hosting the tournament for the fourth time while no other school in MW history has hosted multiple times. The Aztecs have the best record in the tournament among current conference members at 17-11 and are a perfect 6-0 in the conference tournament against teams in this year’s field. SDSU has been the second seed twice and went 4-1, capturing the 2023 tournament championship the last time the tournament was played in America’s Finest City.