IRVINE, Calif. – Before hosting the NCAA DII West Regional Tournament next week, the No. 11 Concordia University Irvine softball team will get a couple more chances to fine tune things in game action.

CUI is traveling up to San Rafael, Calif. for the PacWest Conference Automatic Qualifier Pod Series, which begins this Wednesday. The two-day, round-robin event features each of the pod champions from the PacWest's three geographic regions.

The Dominican Penguins are the NorCal pod champion and will host the Eagles (SoCal pod champs) and University of Hawai'i Hilo Vulcans (the Hawaii pod champion). All six games will be played at Penguin Field and the team with the best win-loss record at the end of the event will receive the PacWest's automatic berth into the postseason.

CUI will play each team once each day. The second team listed below in each matchup is the designated home team for that particular contest.

Wednesday May 12
11:00 a.m. Hawaii Hilo vs. CUI
1:00 p.m. Dominican vs Hawaii Hilo
3:00 p.m. CUI vs Dominican
 
Thursday May 13
11:00 a.m. CUI vs Hawaii Hilo
1:00 p.m. Dominican vs CUI
3:00 p.m.  Hawaii Hilo vs Dominican

For the updated CUI softball schedule, CLICK HERE. Live stats are available (HERE)  and Dominican plans to have a radio broadcast for fans to follow the action as well (HERE), but there is no video live stream at this time. These are all considered non-conference regular season games.

Concordia is already assured a spot in the postseason as the school is ranked No. 1 in the most recent NCAA West Regional rankings and has been designated as the host site for next week's West Regional Tournament. Western Washington already earned the GNAC's AQ last week and is assured a spot in the six-team field that will compete in Irvine beginning on Wednesday, May 19.

The Eagles finished conference place on a five-game winning streak to secure the PacWest Southern California Pod title.  That included a four-game sweep of Azusa Pacific and an emotional Senior Day in which Callie Nunes tossed a one-hitter and Erika Morris launched a grand slam.

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