April 13, 2016
LIVE SCORING | HUNT SEAT LIVE STREAM | WESTERN LIVE STREAM
WACO, Texas – Defending national champion and No. 7 seed South Carolina will open the 2016 NCEA National Championship on Thursday against No. 10 SMU in the opening round at the Extract Events Center in Waco. Thursday’s action gets underway at 9:30 a.m. ET, with live scoring available on GamecocksOnline. Free video streams from both the hunt seat and western arenas will also be available for the entire weekend.
“After ending SECs on a bright note with a good win over Texas A&M, we’re excited to go back out and see if we can build on that momentum,” South Carolina head coach Boo Major said. “It doesn’t matter about rankings, or your seed, or which round you’re competing in – it’s about one meet at a time and competing at the level that we know we can compete at. SMU is a great team, we’ve seen them twice already this season, so we know how strong they are. Both regular season meets were decided by two points or less, so if it’s a close on Thursday, then I think it’s going to come down to which team has the fewest mistakes.”
Thursday’s meet will be the third meeting between the two teams this season.
In November, SMU defeated South Carolina, 11-9, at Sleepy P Ranch in Dallas. The two teams met again on March 4 in the Gamecocks’ regular season finale, where Carolina pulled ahead to beat the Mustangs, 8-7.
The winner of Thursday’s competition will advance to Friday’s quarterfinal round to face off against No. 2 seed Georgia. The Bulldogs finished second at the SEC Championship in March and finished second at last year’s national championship.
