The latest local news, weather and high school sports from the Heartland

 
The Tigers picked up the No. 9 seed and were selected to host the Regionals for the fourth straight season.

Joining Mizzou in Columbia will be Massachusetts, DePaul and Illinois State.

Action gets underway on Friday, May 18 between Massachusetts and DePaul at 4 p.m. CT, with Mizzou taking on Illinois State at 6:30 p.m.

This is the sixth time in school history that the Tigers have been the host of the NCAA Regional round. In the previous five Regionals at Mizzou, the Tigers are 14-4 and have advanced on four separate occasions.

The only time the Tigers didn't advance out of a home Regional was 2007, when they fell to Stanford in the Regional Finals. Mizzou is 10-1 in the last three NCAA Regional rounds.

It's the 16th time in program histor, ninth time in the last 10 years and sixth consecutive year that the Missouri softball team has been selected to participate in the 64-team NCAA Tournament.

Missouri finished alone in second place in the Big 12 this season, posting a 17-7 record in conference play.

The Tigers are 18-7 all-time against Illinois State.

The two teams played five times last season and Mizzou won all five meetings.

 The Tigers have won the last nine meetings overall with the Redbirds.

Illinois State punched their ticket to the NCAA Tournament by capturing the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament crown, knocking off Drake (3-0) and Southern Illinois (13-3) to claim the title.

The Redbirds have been victorious in 10 of their last 11 contests, with their lone loss coming by a 3-0 score at Northern Iowa two weeks ago.

ISU is batting .262 as a team, led by Lizzie Andrews who has a .340 average this season with 11 doubles, two triples and six homers.

Three other Redbirds are hitting over .300 in Laura Canopy (.318), Lauren Kellar (.311) and Jhavon Hamilton (.309). Hamilton leads the team with 12 home runs and 36 batted in, and is perfect (10-for-10) in stolen bases.

Jordan Birch is the team's top pitcher, coming in with a 23-12 record and a 1.55 ERA.

She has 221 strikeouts in 212.0 innings to just 40 walks. Opponents are hitting .214 off her. As a staff, Illinois State has a 2.66 ERA with a .254 batting average against.

Live stats for all of the NCAA Columbia Regional games will be provided at mutigers.com. Postgame notes, quotes and recaps will be posted to the NCAA Tournament Central page at the Mizzou athletics website.

Each game will feature live streaming video on the Mizzou Network at mizzounetwork.com for free. Fans can also follow @MizzouSoftball on Twitter for updates on each game.

For more information go to www.mutigers.com