NCAA Tournament Bracket
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. - The No. 4 Metro State women's soccer team earned the top seed in the NCAA Central Region for the seventh time in the past eight years on Monday in an announcement from the NCAA Championships Committee. It is the eighth consecutive trip to the NCAA Tournament for the Roadrunners, the second-longest active streak. Metro State will be an opening round host school for the eighth straight year.
Fort Lewis earned the No. 2 seed in the region and will host opening round games as well. Metro State will host No. 4 seed Minnesota Duluth and No. 5 seed Minnesota State, Mankato on Friday at 1 p.m. Fort Lewis will host No. 3 seed Colorado Mines and No. 6 Regis on Thursday. The Roadrunners will face the winner of UMD and MSU at 1 p.m. on Sunday.
Metro State has an all-time record of 3-2-0 against MSU, Mankato, but lost 2-1 earlier this season at home to the Mavericks for the Roadrunners' only loss of the season. MSU enters the tournament with a record of 13-4-2 this year after finishing fourth in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference with a record of 9-3-1 in the NSIC. The Mavericks lost 2-1 to Winona State in the semifinals of the NSIC Tournament.
Metro State has never faced Minnesota Duluth. The Bulldogs enter the postseason with a record of 16-2-2 and finished second in the NSIC in the regular season at 11-1-1. They defeated Winona State 2-1 in the NSIC championship.
The Roadrunners have an all-time record of 21-5-1 officially, 20-4-3 when counting all shootouts as ties, in the NCAA Tournament in eight previous trips. They won national championships in 2004 and 2006 and reached the semifinals in 2002 and 2008.
This season, Metro State is 20-1-1 overall and unbeaten in its past 19 games after tying Fort Lewis 1-1 in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference championship on Sunday. The tie snapped an 18-game winning streak, the second-longest in school history. The Roadrunners went 16-0-0 in RMAC play for their eighth consecutive regular season conference championship.