Field Announced for NCAA Women's Soccer Tournament

Stanford, North Carolina, UCLA and Florida State are the top seeds for this year’s NCAA Women’s Soccer Tournament, as chosen by the tournament’s executive committee in Indianapolis and announced Monday evening.

The Cardinal finished the regular season as Pac 10 champions with a perfect 20-0-0 record. North Carolina won the ACC Tournament, with UCLA and Florida State  runners up in their respective conferences.

Big East Champion Notre Dame and West Coast Conference winner Portland were also in the running for top seeds, but their #2 status in the Florida State and UCLA brackets respectively put them in the same position, for all intents and purposes.

The tournament culminates at The College Cup in College Station, Texas Dec. 4-6.

The committee selects the field largely on the basis of the RPI, which is an attempt to formalize the gauging of relative strength from conference to conference based largely on strength of schedule.

Typically the problem with the process isn’t so much with which 64 teams are in, although much more than RPI should be used in gauging this, but with the way the pairings for the tournament itself are made.

In soccer, 16 top seeds are selected based on strength, and then the 1st and 2nd round matchups are in large part with an idea toward avoiding a team traveling more than six hours away from home, to save the NCAA expense. This can affect the integrity of the tournament, when relatively strong teams are matched against one another in an early round, something you would not see, for instance, in the NCAA Basketball Tournament.

This year however, the committee seemed more willing to have teams travel a greater distance from home in order to even out the brackets, as evidenced by early rounds being played in Portland, Santa Clara, Maryland, Dayton and Ohio State.

Some interesting notes from the draw:

• Portland's Michelle Enyeart
  Stanford may get an early rematch with either Bay Area rival Santa Clara or Pac 10 foe USC.
• Three Boston teams will play at Boston College along with Connecticut. If CAA regular season champ Northeastern had been selected it could have been a quartet.
• Of all the first round matches – Boston College vs. Harvard and San Diego vs. San Diego State are the best local rivalries.
• The four teams in the final TDS Tournament 64 National Ranking who were not selected were Northeastern, Minnesota, Charlotte and Missouri. Getting in instead were Arizona State, California, Auburn and Duke.

Of these, the team with the biggest grievance is by far Missouri. It's a tough job to select the right 64 teams, and someone will always feel they should have been in, but the Tigers were 13-6-3, Big 12 Conference champions and won a game in the postseason tournament before losing in overtime in the semifinal. I can think of a couple of at-large teams they are clearly more qualified than for this year's tournament, but the bottom line is the Tigers got jobbed.

Following are the brackets for the 2009 NCAA Women’s College Soccer Tournament including seedings and match locations – courtesy of NCAA Communications

Stanford Bracket
No. 1 Stanford (20-0-0) vs. Northern Arizona (9-8-2)
BYU (17-3-2) vs. UC Santa Barbara (9-9-3)
HOST: Stanford – Nov. 12 & 14

Oklahoma State (15-7-0) vs. USC (12-6-2)
Michigan State (11-4-4) vs. No. 4 Santa Clara (13-6-1)
HOST: Santa Clara – Nov. 13 & 15

No. 3 UCF (16-4-1) vs. Wisconsin-Milwaukee (12-5-3)
Arizona State (9-7-3) vs. Wisconsin (9-5-5)
HOST: Wisconsin - Nov. 13 & 15

Boston University (14-5-2) vs. Connecticut (10-7-2)
Harvard (9-6-1) vs. *No. 2 Boston College (15-3-2)
HOST: Boston College - Nov. 13 & 15

UCLA Bracket
No. 2 Portland (18-1-0) vs. Denver (17-5-1)
Washington (11-5-4) vs. Mississippi (13-5-2)
HOST: Portland - Nov. - 13 & 15

Marquette (15-5-2) vs. Dayton (16-0-5)
Murray State (11-8-2) vs. No. 3 Virginia Tech (14-7-0)
HOST: Dayton - Nov. 13 & 15

No. 4 Penn State (12-5-2) vs. Colgate (11-6-3)
Virginia (9-5-5) vs. St. John's (N.Y.) (13-6-1)
HOST: Penn State - Nov. 13 & 15

San Diego State (14-3-5) vs. San Diego (12-6-2)
Boise State (13-6-4) vs. No. 1 UCLA (17-2-1)
HOST: UCLA - Nov. 13 & 15

North Carolina Bracket
No. 1 North Carolina (17-3-1) vs. High Point (7-14-2)
UNC Wilmington (13-7-1) vs. Georgia (14-5-1)
HOST: North Carolina - Nov. 13 & 15

Washington State (13-5-2) vs. Villanova (11-5-5)
Monmouth (15-4-1) vs. No. 4 Maryland (12-5-2)
HOST: Maryland - Nov. 13 & 15

No. 3 Wake Forest (13-5-2) vs. Kennesaw State (11-6-0)
Loyola (MD) (15-4-3) vs. West Virginia (9-6-6)
HOST: Wake Forest - Nov. 13 & 15

Rutgers (13-3-4) vs. Duke (8-8-4)
Davidson (12-9-1) vs. *No. 2 South Carolina (17-3-2)
HOST: South Carolina - Nov. 13 & 15

Florida State Bracket
No. 2 Notre Dame (17-3-1) vs. IUPUI (17-4-0)
Central Michigan (16-3-3) vs. Purdue (12-5-3)
HOST: Notre Dame - Nov. 13 & 15

Ohio State  (14-3-2) vs. Oregon State (12-7-1)
Illinois State (12-6-1) vs. No. 3 Florida (15-5-2)
HOST: Ohio State - Nov. 13 & 15

No. 4 LSU (14-4-4) vs. Arkansas Pine Bluff (11-6-3)
Memphis (16-6-0) vs. Texas A&M(w) (14-6-2)
HOST: LSU - Nov. 13 & 15

Auburn (10-8-3) vs. California (10-8-1)
Southeastern Louisiana (13-4-2) vs. No. 1 Florida State (16-4-1)
HOST: Florida State