Nov. 12, 2007

The Notre Dame women’s soccer team (15-4-2) – riding one of the nation’s longest unbeaten streaks (12-0-1) – has been selected as one of 16 seeded teams and will serve as a host team for first- and second-round games of the upcoming NCAA Championship. Notre Dame will open its quest for the program’s third NCAA title on Friday night, Nov. 16, at Alumni Field, which will serve as the site of three total women’s soccer games this weekend. Friday’s pair of first-round games will feature Illinois VERSUS Louisville at 5:00 p.m. eastern, followed by Notre Dame versus Loyola Chicago at 7:30. The winners of those games then will return to Alumni Field for a second-round game on Sunday, Nov. 18, at 1:00 p.m.

Notre Dame will be appearing in the NCAAs for the 15th consecutive season (1993-2007) and this will mark the 14th straight year that NCAA Tournament games have been played at Alumni Field.

Tickets are $7 for adults and $3 for children, students and senior citizens – with the first 100 Notre Dame/Saint Mary’s/Holy Cross students admitted free of charge.

See the below link for the complete 64-team bracket: http://www.ncaasports.com/soccer/womens/brackets/viewable/straight64_dyn/2007/DI

The past three years have seen the NCAA shift to a different seeding system for the tournament, abandoning the format where there were 16 national seeds that were assigned number 1-16. The current format has four seeds (listed 1-4) in each of the four quadrants of the bracket. Notre Dame is the fourth seed in its portion of the bracket, with North Carolina (17-3-1) the top seed, Purdue (19-2-2) the second seed and Georgia (17-3-2) the fourth seed in Notre Dame’s quadrant of the bracket.

Should the top-seeded teams advance to the third round (played Nov. 23, 24 or 25), Notre Dame then would head to North Carolina with a bid to the quarterfinals on the line. If Notre Dame and Purdue each advance with three straight wins, there would be a quarterfinal battle between those in-state teams on Nov. 30, Dec. 1 or Dec. 2.

In addition to UNC, the other three top seeds in the 64-team field include (in no particular order) UCLA, Stanford and Penn State. The winner of the UNC quadrant will face the winner of the Stanford quadrant in the NCAA semifinals on Dec. 7 in College Station, Texas.

Teams from the same conference cannot play each other in the first round but second-round conference matchups were permissible in the formation of the bracket. When pairing teams, the committee was restricted by geographic proximity and sites were selected for the first and second rounds to create the fewest number of flights; therefore, only 13 of the top 16 seeds will be hosting first- and second-round competition (Wake Forest will be playing at Boston College; Portland at Denver; and USC at Missouri).

The other quadrant on Notre Dame’s side of the bracket includes (seeds 1-4): Stanford, Texas A&M, Florida State and Wake Forest. The other side of the bracket features one quadrant with (1-4) UCLA, Portland, Tennessee and Virginia while the top four seeds in the final quadrant are (1-4) Penn State, Southern California, Florida and West Virginia. The 26th annual NCAA Division I Women’s College Cup will be played December 7 and 9 at Texas A&M’s Aggie Soccer Complex.

Loyola Chicago (14-8-1) claimed the Horizon League’s automatic bid, after edging Milwaukee in penalty kicks to end a Horizon title game that was tied (2-2) after overtime. Illinois (11-6-2; Big Ten) and Louisville (13-5-2; BIG EAST) both reached the semifinals in their respective conference tournaments.

Friday’s game will be the fifth meeting between Notre Dame and Loyola Chicago, with Notre Dame winning the four previous meetings (including a 5-0 game in the first round of the 2003 NCAAs, at Alumni Field). Notre Dame and Illinois have played several spring exhibitions but have yet to meet in an official fall-season game. Notre Dame’s 5-1-0 series record versus Louisville includes five straight victories, most recently a 1-0 road win on Sept. 28 (the first game in the current 13-game unbeaten streak).

The BIG EAST Conference placed five teams (third-most from any conferences) into the 64-team field. In addition to Notre Dame, West Virginia and Louisville, the other BIG EAST participants in the 2007 NCAAs will include Connecticut and first-time entry Georgetown.

Notre Dame owns a 5-4-1 record this season versus teams in the 2007 NCAA field, posting wins over Florida (2-0), Connecticut (2-1/OT), Louisville (1-0) and Georgetown (3-0; 2-0) – plus the 1-1 tie at WVU in the BIG EAST title game and losses to Stanford (1-2/OT), Penn State (1-2), Santa Clara (1-7) and Oklahoma State (1-2). The Irish also tied North Carolina (2-2) and beat Virginia (3-1) during 2007 preseason exhibitions.

Notre Dame owns a 40-12-1 all-time record (.764) in NCAA Tournament play, including 32-3-0 (.914) in NCAA games played at Alumni Field. The Irish have claimed NCAA titles in 1995 and ’04, joining UNC and Portland as the only repeat winners in the history of the tournament.

Check back to und.com throughout the week for continuing coverage of the Irish women’s soccer team.