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Opening Day for baseball coincided with the unofficial start of the 2013 National Pro Fastpitch season. The professional softball league's four teams won't play their first games until June 5, but the college draft starts to bring the rosters into focus.

Several returning starters and a well-regarded freshman class have Oregon on the trail back to the Women's College World Series.

Keilani Ricketts and Jessica Shults were on the wrong side of Jackie Traina in last month's WCWS championship series, but the trio now finds itself playing for a common cause while wearing the red, white and blue.

Alabama hasn't been around long, but it's come close to softball's big prize a few times. Wednesday was its breakthrough as the Crimson Tide won the WCWS title over Oklahoma.

For the first time since 2007, there will be a winner-take-all Game 3. Alabama saw to that with an 8-6 win against Oklahoma.

It was billed as a duel of pitchers Keilani Ricketts of Oklahoma and Jackie Traina of Alabama. Yet both pitchers batted cleanup, and produced, for their respective teams.

The Crimson Tide's six seniors don't mind the underclassmen grabbing the headlines. They just want their share of a championship.

LSU loyalists bring a bit of the Bayou to Oklahoma City to support the Lady Tigers in their bid to win the Women's College World Series.

Oklahoma's California recruits and Alabama's Southern roots saw to it that no Pac-12 team made the championship series for the first time since 1986.

Oklahoma's ace has been good for some time. In the postseason, she is 7-0 with a 0.16 ERA and 76 strikeouts in 45 innings.

ASU's Hillary Bach didn't throw a pitch during the postseason a year ago. But with the season on the line Saturday, she delivered a shutout against LSU.

It's Cal versus Oklahoma and Alabama versus Arizona State as softball's top powers do battle in a day for the ages at the WCWS.

Lauren Chamberlain is part of a slamming trio in the heart of Oklahoma's lineup.

Cal's star pitcher, Jolene Henderson, doesn't have to look far to find her security blanket and best friend -- sister Danielle is at third base.

Best game? Most compelling players? Another Pac-12 title? You want to know, and we run down the answers heading into the Women's College World Series.

Starting with No. 1 Cal, here are the players to watch and storylines to follow at the Women's College World Series.