EUGENE -- No one will confuse Oregon's road to college softball's postseason with "Hoosiers."



Once buried near the bottom of the Pac-12 standings for years, the Ducks have transformed into conference bullies under coach Mike White. Entering this season -- White's eighth in charge, and the program's second playing in $17 million Jane Sanders Stadium -- UO won the last four Pac-12 titles.



The program's old park didn't even have permanent lights.



Now, Ducks softball commands the spotlight annually.



Beginning Friday, UO hosts its sixth consecutive NCAA tournament regional in Eugene, opening at 8:30 p.m. against Horizon League champion Illinois-Chicago. (The matchup is preceded by Wisconsin's 6 p.m. game against Missouri.) In a nod to the strength of both UO and its conference, Oregon was deemed third-best in the country despite finishing second in the Pac-12 by the tournament's selection committee.

That seeding lays out a path to what could be a fourth trip to the Women's College World Series in the last six seasons for a team boasting the country's fifth-best pitching staff, with a 1.31 earned-run average, and seventh-best offense, with 6.5 runs per game.



Did we mention that UO in 2017 returned an All-American shortstop, three others who earned all-Pac-12 honors, and the country's top-ranked recruiting class?



Yet Sunday evening, only minutes after Oregon learned its postseason seed, White called the juggernaut he's built "scrappy" -- and the statement wasn't far from the truth, either.





With 11 combined freshmen and sophomores and just six upperclassmen, Oregon this year embarked on the closest thing to a "rebuild" since UO's string of conference titles began. UO leaned on young and new faces to transform disappointment from last season's super regional loss at home by a veteran-laden UO team into an NCAA record-tying start to 2017, as UO won its first 35 games.



Freshman right-hander Maggie Balint, the country's fourth-ranked recruit, has a team-leading 1.13 ERA and is tied for the team lead with 19 wins. Classmate Miranda Elish, last year's top-ranked recruit, has a 1.61 ERA, and sophomore Megan Kleist (1.26 ERA) is the team's official ace but is interchangeable with the others.



UO's top hitter is Alexis Mack, the South Carolina transfer with the team-leading .415 average and .500 on-base percentage.



"Obviously, our freshmen have been huge this year," White said this week. "Last year we probably had all the big names in the world out there and we didn't get it done so we're going to have to scrap and find a way."



UO found its way beginning in September.



After two-a-day practices, Oregon contracted The Program, a team-building company founded by a former special forces Marine, to jump-start bonding through sessions that included a trust exercise in a pool dubbed "Judgment Day."



From there, the team traveled west to the Oregon coast's sand dunes near Florence for dune-buggy rides and team-wide discussions centering on accountability.



Its leaders identified, White turned to another puzzle.



Who would provide UO's offensive punch?



The strength of UO's incoming freshman pitchers, together with Kleist, allayed White's concerns about replacing Cheridan Hawkins, a three-time All-America who'd thrown a UO-record 108 victories and 33 shutouts.



The hole in the lineup was more puzzling. UO was tasked with replacing its career RBI and home runs leader (Janelle Lindvall), an All-America outfielder who ranked in UO's top-seven all-time in runs, homers, RBIs, walks and doubles (Koral Costa) and another outfielder who finished in the school's top eight for runs and average (Alyssa Gillespie).



"We're not trying to be a home-run hitting team; that was last year's team," White said. "This team is more gap-to-gap. Obviously, we'll take the home runs, no doubt about that, but we just want to hit the ball hard somewhere. That's our motto."



And it worked. Oregon started 35-0.



Then came six losses in eight games, against No. 9 UCLA, No. 12 Washington and eventual conference champion Arizona, ranked No. 3 at the time. Oregon has been shutout just three times this season, and all three came during that stretch, but UO's pitching was coming undone, too.



Balint, UO's fearless freshman righty, began "questioning the strike zone or my pitches at the time or not trusting coach with the pitch calling," she said.



That UO would eventually lose was expected, of course. Even before the Pac-12 placed eight of its nine programs in the NCAA tournament, the conference's strength was well-known.



"We played three of the top five teams in the country," third baseman Jenna Lilley said. "It's kind of a bear."



How a young UO team would respond, however, was the unknown.



After losing its first two games against Arizona in Tucson, UO closed the series with a 4-3 win that, even in the moment, White felt was a "game-changing time of the season."





The Ducks took the lead on Arizona with two runs in the sixth inning and Kleist allowed six hits in seven innings to begin its current 10-game winning streak.



"That was when I learned a lot about this club," White said. "That they're starting to listen."



Buoyed by what Lilley called a "new sense of confidence," UO has won 10 straight to close the regular season 47-6, including a three-game sweep in Eugene of Florida State, which was ranked second at the time and has since earned the NCAA tournament's fourth seed. While Lilley has struggled uncharacteristically at the plate this season, the emergence of Mack and freshmen Mia Camuso (.360 average) and Shannon Rhodes (.311) has bolstered an oft feast-or-famine offense.



And generally, UO began doing the little things right again. Seeing every signal. Getting out of innings in 13 pitches or fewer. Forcing opposing pitchers into 20-pitch innings. They are a few of the multiple factors UO assistant James Kolaitis calculates into a formula called the "blueprint."



"We're at 98.5 winning percentage when we have a higher blueprint number than a negative blueprint number," White said.



It was during UO's rebound from its rough patch, White said, that he felt the investments in team-building back in September paid off.



"I don't see much finger pointing, I don't see much blame," he said. "Everyone knows their role right now. No one is really complaining. You've got to understand it's not always going to be easy."



"We can't just expect to go 35-0 and continue to go that way. You've got to get a kick in the gut sometime."



In hindsight, Oregon is viewing its up-and-down past month as its dry run for what could come in the NCAA tournament. Under White, Oregon is 21-0 all-time in regional play but 11-15 in super regionals and the WCWS, combined.



In this postseason, it will be rare that UO is considered an underdog.



But the Ducks say this season has prepared them to scrap as if they are one.



-- Andrew Greif

agreif@oregonian.com

@andrewgreif