Tennessee Softball Coach Rips Controversial No-Call vs UCLA

Tennessee Lady Volunteers softball coach Karen Weekly didn't mince words on her thoughts about UCLA Bruins standout Megan Grant missing home plate and the review thereafter being upheld.

In what would eventually be a 5-4 Lady Volunteers win over the Bruins in last weekend's Women's College World Series elimination game, Grant sent a towering two-run home run to right field to tie the game with two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning.

As Grant rounded the bases, celebrating, she stepped over home plate while jumping in her dugout's celebration circle before being guided back to the bag by Bruins catcher, Alexis Ramirez. By law, because Grant passed home plate and was later assisted back to touch it by a player from the dugout (Ramirez was up next to bat), the home run would have been nullified and UCLA would have lost the game right then and there.

However, after upwards of 20 minutes of review time, NCAA officials upheld the ruling on the field and counted the home run according to Appendix G of the NCAA Softball rulebook, that states the play was unreviewable and not subject to video review.

Weekly had words for the officials, both during and after the game.

"I think everybody but four people saw the play at the plate,” Weekly said after the game. “We saw in the dugout she had missed the plate and we saw her teammates had kind of pushed her back. By rule, that should have been nullified. ... We went to the umpire and said, ‘This is what happened.’ Then they did their thing.”

Not only was Weekly upset at the no-call, like many softball fans, she was upset at the time it took to review the no-call and delay what became the inevitable.

After three frames of extra innings play, the Lady Vols loaded the bases in the bottom of the ninth and knocked in the game-winning run off a single into shallow left field to advance in the Women's College World series and eliminate UCLA from the tournament altogether.

Tennessee eventually lost to Texas in the final round, coming up just two runs short of making it to Oklahoma City on Wednesday.