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Rowan Softball Opens NCAA Tourney On Friday

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The Rowan University softball team is getting ready to appear in the Division III NCAA Tournament for the seventh straight year.

The Profs earned an at-large berth out of the New Jersey Athletic Conference and they will open up play in the double-elimination regional on Friday, taking on Framingham State up in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Rowan is 31-9 on the season and head coach Kim Wilson talks about what has allowed them to have this success.

"I think pitching is definitely one of our strengths," she tells KYW Newsradio. "We're one of the best hitting teams in the conference. We score a lot of runs, play pretty good defense."

Listen to the entire interview with Rowan's Kim Wilson:

 

Rowan is hitting .344 as a team, with nine players sporting an average of .300 or better. On the mound, the Profs have an impressive 1.38 ERA.

Wilson is quite impressed with what her team has already accomplished here in 2017.

"We're pretty young," she says. "We graduated five seniors off the team last year that took us to a third place finish at the national championship. So replacing with younger kids, sometimes you never know what you're going to get, but we've been extremely happy with our performance throughout the season."

The veteran players on this team have played in a lot of big games. Last year, the Profs won seven games during that tournament run. Wilson says that experience has already been big for her group this year, especially early in the season.

"There are some games that we probably shouldn't of won but they have a winning mentality," she says. "They're coming off a little bit of a . . maybe a little bit of a swagger going into the season. So we stepped up, we won some games, close games. We dominated some people. I think that experience definitely helped, even the kids that came off the bench and now are starters this year. I think that experience was huge for them."

Rowan and Framingham State will be joined in this regional by the host school, Babson College, and Lesley University. The winner of the regional advances to the super regional.

Rowan's first game on Friday gets underway at 1:00pm.

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