Nov. 10, 2008

2008 NCAA Championship bracket (PDF)
Tournament Central

NOTRE DAME, Ind. – For the third time in school history, the Notre Dame women’s soccer team (21-0-0) — ranked No. 1 in all four national polls for the past eight weeks — has been selected as the No. 1 overall seed for the 2008 NCAA Championship and thus will have the chance to play at home through the first four rounds of the tournament, as long as the Irish can maintain their winning ways. Notre Dame kicks off its quest for the program’s third NCAA title on Friday night, Nov. 14, at Alumni Field, when it plays host to Toledo at 7:30 p.m. (ET). Michigan State and Wisconsin-Milwaukee will tangle in Friday’s other first-round game at Alumni Field (5 p.m. ET kickoff), with the winners of those games returning Sunday, Nov. 16 for a second-round game at 1 p.m. (ET).

“We’re very appreciative of being the top seed in the tournament because it recognizes the body of work we put together during the year,” Notre Dame head coach Randy Waldrum said. “However, once you get to the NCAAs, everything you’ve accomplished to that point is set aside and you start from scratch. Toledo is going to present us with a very strong challenge on Friday, and we’ve already started focusing and preparing for what should be a high-quality NCAA tournament game.

The past four 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 format has four seeds (listed 1-4) in each of the four quadrants of the bracket. Notre Dame is the top seed in its portion of the bracket, with Florida State (14-2-3) the No. 2 seed, Boston College (13-5-2) the third seed and Colorado (14-4-4) the fourth seed in Notre Dame’s quadrant of the bracket.

The other three national No. 1 seeds are North Carolina, UCLA and Stanford — with Notre Dame and Stanford lined up for a possible NCAA semifinal matchup on Dec. 5 in Cary, N.C. The teams have met twice before in the NCAA tournament, both in the round of 16 and both resulting in 1-0 home victories, with the Irish winning in 1999 and the Cardinal answering in 2002.

The NCAA selection committee’s bracketing principles and procedures prohibit teams from the same conference facing 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 12 of the top 16 seeds will be hosting first- and second-round competition (Florida State will be playing at Auburn; Colorado at Minnesota; Oklahoma State at Rutgers; and USC at BYU).

The other quadrant on Notre Dame’s side of the bracket includes (seeds 1-4): Stanford, Portland, Wake Forest and Oklahoma State.

The other side of the bracket features one quadrant with (1-4): North Carolina, Florida, Texas A&M and Missouri while the top four seeds in the final quadrant are (1-4): UCLA, Virginia, Duke and USC.

The 27th annual NCAA Division I Women’s College Cup will be played December 5 and 7 at WakeMed Soccer Park (formerly SAS Soccer Park) in Cary, N.C., with the national semifinals and title contest to be televised live to a national audience by ESPN2, ESPNU and ESPN360.com.

Toledo (16-4-1) is headed to the NCAA Championship after winning its third consecutive Mid-American Conference title with a 1-0 victory over Eastern Michigan in the MAC Tournament final on Sunday. The Rockets, who also won the MAC regular-season crown, will be making their third NCAA postseason trip, having faced Villanova in 2006 (L, 5-1 at University Park, Pa.) and Indiana last year (L, 3-2 in double overtime at West Lafayette, Ind.).

Friday’s game will be the first meeting between Notre Dame and Toledo in women’s soccer, although the teams have occasionally met during the spring season. The Rockets also will be making their first-ever visit to Alumni Field.

Wisconsin-Milwaukee (18-2-2) won the Horizon League Championship title, downing Loyola-Chicago, 6-2 in Sunday’s tournament final. The Panthers currently are ranked 19th in the National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) poll and wound up 17th in the final Soccer America poll of the season, which was released Monday.

Notre Dame owns a 4-1-0 series lead against Wisconsin-Milwaukee, with the Panthers looming as a potential second-round opponent for the second time in three seasons. The Irish dispatched UWM, 1-0, in 2006 at Alumni Field, getting a goal from then-freshman forward Michele Weissenhofer (Naperville, Ill./Neuqua Valley) in the fifth minute. The Panthers do have one win in four career games at Alumni Field, outlasting Michigan on penalty kicks (5-3) after a scoreless double-overtime tie in the first round of the 2006 NCAA Championship.

Michigan State (13-6-3) finished fourth in the Big Ten Conference regular-season race, then advanced to the semifinals of the conference tournament with a shootout win over Illinois in the quarterfinals (0-0, 4-3 PK) before bowing to eventual champion and top seed Penn State, 1-0.

Notre Dame maintains a 10-2-0 series advantage on Michigan State, and like Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the Spartans have faced the Irish in NCAA second-round play before. Back in 2005, Notre Dame defeated MSU, 3-0, at Alumni Field, as then-freshman forward Kerri Hanks (Allen, Texas/Allen) scored the gamewinner in the 33rd minute, while Katie Thorlakson and Annie Schefter each added a goal and assist. The Spartans are 2-5 all-time at Alumni Field, earning a 3-0 win over Notre Dame back in 1989 (the second season for the fledgling Irish program), and downing Bowling Green, 4-0, in the first round of the 2005 NCAA Tournament.

The BIG EAST Conference had four teams selected for this year’s NCAA Championship field. BIG EAST Championship semifinalist Marquette cracked the field of 64 and actually was placed in Notre Dame’s region. The Golden Eagles will venture to Minnesota for their opening-round game, while Colorado (the third seed in the Notre Dame quadrant) matches up with South Dakota State in the other first-rounder in the Twin Cities. BIG EAST American Division champion West Virginia will open with Princeton (before a potential second-round tussle with regional rival Virginia in the UCLA region), while Rutgers will play host to first- and second-round games, as the Scarlet Knights face visiting Penn State in their opener (Stanford regional No. 4 seed Oklahoma State meets Fairfield in the other first-round game in Piscataway).

Notre Dame owns a 6-0-0 record this season versus teams in the 2008 NCAA field (with a 15-4 scoring margin in those games), posting wins at North Carolina (1-0) and Penn State (3-1), a neutral-site victory over Duke (3-1 in Chapel Hill, N.C., in the Carolina Classic) and home wins over Marquette (3-1 in regular season, 2-0 in BIG EAST Championship semifinals) and Rutgers (3-1). Both of Notre Dame preseason exhibition opponents also qualified for this year’s NCAA Championship — the Irish defeated Memphis, 3-1, at Alumni Field, and fell to Virginia, 2-1, in Traverse City, Mich. (although that game was played with a non-traditional format of three 30-minute periods and neither Irish senior All-America forward/Hermann Trophy candidate Brittany Bock nor junior goalkeeper Kelsey Lysander played in that contest).

The Irish are entering the NCAAs with their first-ever unbeaten and untied record, but their fifth unbeaten record in the past 15 seasons (also 1994, 1997, 2000 and 2006). Notre Dame’s 72-8 scoring margin this season includes a 36-2 spread in the first half, while the Irish have posted 14 shutouts and have chalked up seven wins over Top 25 opponents (by a combined margin of 17-4). What’s more, Notre Dame joins Portland as the only two teams to rank among the top five in the nation in both scoring offense (2nd, 3.43 goals/game) and goals-against average (4th, 0.378), with the Irish allowing just 48 shots on goal all season (2.29 per game). The Irish also feature one of the deepest lineups in the country, setting new school records with 17 different goalscorers and 21 separate point scorers among its 26-man active roster (does not count two goalkeepers and another player who has not taken the field this year due to injury).

Last season, the Irish made their second consecutive NCAA College Cup appearance and third in four years, going 19-5-2 before falling to Florida State, 3-2, in the national semifinals at College Station, Texas. That loss remains the only defeat (along with one tie) for Notre Dame in its last 39 games, following a 3-4-1 start to the 2007 campaign.

Notre Dame has a 44-13-1 all-time record (.767) in NCAA Tournament play, including 35-3-0 (.921) in NCAA games played at Alumni Field. The Irish have claimed NCAA titles in 1995 and 2004, joining North Carolina and Portland as the only repeat winners in the history of the tournament, and Notre Dame also has finished as the NCAA runner-up four times (1994, 1996, 1999 and 2006), as part of its nine NCAA College Cup berths (semifinalist in 1997, 2000 and 2007), second only to North Carolina since 1994.

With Connecticut and Santa Clara failing to qualify for this year’s NCAA Championship, Notre Dame now holds the second-longest active streak of consecutive NCAA Championship berths with 16, trailing only North Carolina (27) in that category. The Irish and Tar Heels also remain the only teams to have reached the final-32 or further in every NCAA Championship since 1993.

Notre Dame was the top overall seed in the 1994 and 2000 NCAA tournaments, reaching the title game in ’94 (L, 5-0 to North Carolina at Portland’s Merlo Field) and advancing to the national semifinals in 2000 (L, 2-1 to UNC at San Jose’s Spartan Stadium).

Tickets for the NCAA Championship first- and second-round games at Alumni Field can be purchased by contacting the Notre Dame Athletics Ticket Office (574-631-7356) or by stopping by the Joyce Center Gate 1 ticket windows on the second floor during normal business hours (9 a.m.-5 p.m. ET, weekdays). In addition, fans can buy their Irish women’s soccer tickets on-line by going to the official Notre Dame athletics web site (www.UND.com) and clicking on the “tickets” bar on the main page of the site, or by visiting the Alumni Field ticket windows on game day.

— ND —