A road sweep at Providence on Saturday has USF's softball team in first place in the Big East standings going into the final day of the regular season. The Bulls, 16-4 in league play, have a one-game lead on DePaul, so winning both of today's games at Connecticut would clinch the conference regular-season crown for USF, as would a USF win and a DePaul loss at Pittsburgh, or two DePaul losses.

A sweep Sunday makes it easy to figure out, but should the Bulls split two games with Huskies and DePaul sweep the Panthers, awarding the league crown gets complicated. USF and DePaul split their two-game series this season, so the next tiebreaker goes to the team that fared better against the team ranked next-highest in the league standings, moving down the standings until one team shows an advantage.

For this tiebreaker, USF fans should pull for Notre Dame to sweep Syracuse, as that would put the Irish third in the Big East standings and give the Bulls the tiebreaker because USF swept Notre Dame, while DePaul split two games with the Irish. Again, it's a lot easier for USF to just win both games Sunday and clinch the outright regular-season crown. We'll have an update Sunday after the doubleheader, and the league's tournament is at Louisville next weekend ...