WVU Women’s Soccer Again Seeded in NCAA Tournament

Coming off a 3-0 victory in the Big 12 Soccer Championship match, the West Virginia women’s soccer team was selected as the No. 2 seed in the Florida State Region of the NCAA Division I women’s soccer championship.

The Mountaineers (14-4-3) will face Radford in the first round. The Highlanders (16-2-1) won the Big South Conference tournament, defeating Gardner Webb on Sunday, Nov. 4. WVU will host this and all rounds until the Elite Eight.

In WVU’s section of the tournament: Wake Forest (8-8-1) will host Ohio State (9-5-4), Penn State (15-5-1) will host Bowling Green (14-4-3), and No. 3 seed South Carolina (13-5-1) will host UNC Greensboro (15-4-1).

WVU could get a rematch with PSU in the third round. The Mountaineers fell to the Nittany Lions 1-0 early in the season in State College, at the Penn State Invitational.

One of those eight teams will face either No. 1 seed Florida State, Loyola (IL), South Florida, Albany (NY), LSU, Boston U., No. 4 seed Southern Cal or Long Beach State, from the lower-half of the quarter.

This is the 19th season in a row the Mountaineers have played in the NCAA tournament. Last, year, WVU fell 3-1 to Penn State in the third round of the tournament.

Despite losing the Big 12 Soccer regular season crown for the first time since joining the conference, WVU won the Big 12 tournament, marking the ninth season in a row the program won a conference trophy.

Five other Big 12 teams joined WVU in the NCAA tournament. Texas earned the No. 4 seed and Kansas is unseeded in the North Carolina region. Big 12 tournament runners-up Baylor are the No. 2 seed and Texas Tech earned an at-large berth in the Georgetown region. TCU is unseeded in the Stanford regional.

The 2018 Women’s College Cup will be held Friday, Nov. 30 and Sunday, Dec. 2 at WakeMed Soccer Park, in Cary, North Carolina. The Mountaineers last reached the College Cup in 2016, when they lost to USC 3-1 in the final.