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The women had to wait a little while to find out about their March Madness placement, but it was announced that #6 Oregon State will open their NCAA Tournament this Friday, March 18th against the #15 seed Troy Trojans (20-12) from the Sun Belt. The game will be played in Corvallis with a scheduled 2:00pm PST tip, and will be televised nationally on ESPN2.
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Troy is coming off a 61 to 60 Sun Belt Tournament Championship win over Little Rock, and the Trojans finished fourth in the Sun Belt regular season. The Trojans' resume overall is a decent 12 and 8 in terms of Sun Belt conference play, but in higher profile games Troy struggled, including a 97 to 43 loss to Vanderbilt, and a 89 to 67 loss to UAB. Oregon State and Troy did not play any common opponents.
Senior guard Ashley Beverly Kelley led the Trojans scoring 20.3 points per game, and junior guard ArJae' Saunders averaged 12.8 points followed by junior forward Caitlyn Ramirez with 12.2 points per game.
If Oregon State wins their opening game against Troy, the Beavers will face either Atlantic 10 St. Bonaventure (23 - 7) or Big 12 Oklahoma St. (21 - 9) in the second round on March 20th in Corvallis. The Bonnies, the 4th place team from the Atlantic 10, and the Cowgirls, who tied for 4th place in the Big XII, will play Friday at 4:30 PM at Gill. The Dallas Regional #1 seed is Baylor, who finished 33 and 1, and #4 in the country.
Other Pac-12 teams to make the Big Dance include:
Arizona State, also receiving a #2 seed, but in the Sioux Falls Regional that includes #1 seed South Carolina The Sun Devils will first face #15 seed New Mexico State.
UCLA, with a #3 seed, find themselves in #1 seed UConn's Bridgeport Regional, and will first face #14 seed Hawai'i.
The Stanford Cardinal are a #4 seed, and will open against #13 San Francisco in the Lexington Regional (which has Notre Dame as the #1 seed).
Washington is seeded #7, and is also in the Lexington Regional, where the Huskies will play #10 Penn in the opening round.
Stay tuned for more coverage of the women's NCAA run!
Go Beavs!