After a furious 8-1 run to end the regular season, a huge win over No. 6 national seed Texas to start the NCAA Tournament and a gritty victory over Houston to advance to the Austin Regional final, Northwestern saw its season come to a close Sunday in a 5-0 loss to the Longhorns in a winner-takes-all game. Read full recap at NUSports.com, view the interactive NCAA bracket and read about Northwestern’s first loss Sunday in this post.

Northwestern tied a school-single game record with 17 base hits en route to beating Houston, 13-9, Saturday in a winner’s bracket victory that sends the Wildcats to the NCAA Austin Regional championship Sunday. The Wildcats (29-27) advance to their fifth NCAA Regional championship round in the last eight years. Read full recap at NUSports.com and view the interactive NCAA bracket.

Five-time reigning Big Ten champ Michigan and Northwestern won their opening NCAA games Friday to advance to the winner’s bracket Saturday. The Wolverines got a walk-off win against Kentucky, 3-2, and the Wildcats shut out No. 6 Texas, 2-0. Up Saturday: Michigan plays Louisville and Northwestern takes on Houston. View the interactive NCAA bracket and read recaps in this post.

Big Ten softball’s regular-season champion Michigan and Northwestern play their NCAA Tournament openers on Friday. The Wolverines open at 4:30 p.m. ET in the Louisville regional against Kentucky, and yopu can find lot of good softball stuff on the team’s page at MGoBlue.com. Meanwhile, NUsports.com has you covered as the Wildcats face Texas in Austin regional Friday at 5 p.m. ET. The first-round regionals are double elimination and a great way to track all games is on the NCAA.com interactive bracket. The B1G Diamond Report show will cover both of these teams on Saturday at 6 p.m. ET.

The Big Ten Conference announced the 2012 All-Big Ten Softball Teams on Wednesday afternoon, and five-time reigning champ Michigan dominated the honors. The Wolverines swept all of the individual laurels, with first baseman Amanda Chidester taking home Player of the Year for the second consecutive season. See all the teams and the superlative winners in this post.

The Big Ten Conference released its Big Ten Softball Players of the Week for May 7-13 on Monday. See all the winners and check out what they did to earn the distinctions in this post.