South Carolina softball is having conversations it has not in years.

Pushing towards the top half of the SEC standings. Trying to host a regional for the first time since 2018. Maybe even getting a top-eight national seed for the first time since the tournament moved to its current format in 2005.

And for first-year head coach Ashley Chastain Woodard, having her team involved in these conversations is all you can ask for at this point in the season.

“It’s definitely something we’ve started to look at,” Chastain Woodard said after South Carolina’s series sweep over Kentucky. “Every day it changes. It’s a really exciting opportunity to be in the place we’re in to look at it.”

How often are Chastain Woodard and her assistant coaches crunching the numbers?

“Hourly I feel like,” she said laughing. “As a staff we’re looking at it often. We’re constantly following a bunch of different teams that are around us and who we’re going to be matched up against for different seeding.”

South Carolina is 37-13 overall and 11-10 in SEC play with three games to go in the regular season, a crucial home series against perennial powerhouse Alabama. The Crimson Tide also enter the series with an 11-10 conference record, making this final match-up a crucial one for both teams as they jockey for NCAA Tournament positioning.

As always when it comes to college sports and selection committees, there is no exact science. Overall record, conference record, RPI, strength of schedule and performance in the last 10 games will all factor into the committee’s seeding decisions.

Historically speaking, the Gamecocks would almost certainly be safe to earn a top-16 seed and host a regional if they win the series this weekend. Over the last 10 seasons 62 SEC teams have finished above .500, and 58 have hosted a regional. Even if South Carolina lost two of three to the Crimson Tide there would still be roughly a coin flip chance, with eight of the 17 teams at exactly .500 in the conference earning hosting spots in the last decade.

That fact coupled with South Carolina having an RPI comfortably in the top-16 at No. 9 right now, plus the No. 6 strength of schedule, and the Gamecocks have an excellent chance of returning postseason softball to Beckham Field for the first time since 2018.

“We had a little bit of an RPI education meeting,” Chastain Woodard said on how the team is approaching it. “Just to make sure that they [players] know the difference between the rankings and the RPI and kind of how it all works. We have a whole group of players and freshmen that don’t know, they’ve never been in the postseason before.”

Getting a top-eight seed and the right to host the entire postseason up until the Women’s College World Series is a little trickier. The RPI at No. 8 is right on the cutline, but only one team — 2019 Florida — has earned a national seed without a winning record in conference play over the last decade. Even if the Gamecocks took the series this weekend only two teams with 13-11 records — 2024 Missouri and 2021 LSU — have received a national seed.

A sweep this weekend would significantly increase the odds. Over half of all teams to win at least 14 SEC games in the last 10 years have earned a national seed, 58.7 percent to be exact. It is not impossible South Carolina could sneak in there with two wins against the Crimson Tide and a successful stay at the SEC Tournament next week, but that would be the minimum requirement to earn one of those coveted spots.

It starts with just playing good softball, though, and that will be much easier said than done with Alabama coming to town.

“We did a little bit of education on it,” Chastain Woodard said. “And then said, ‘Oky, we’re going to tuck it away, let us [coaches] worry about it. You guys just play the game really hard.”

The first two games of the series both start at 6 p.m. ET on Thursday and Friday respectively with SEC+ carrying the coverage, before Saturday’s regular season finale starts at noon with a television broadcast on SEC Network.

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