Making the 64-team NCAA tournament field in women’s soccer can be a short-lived thrill for many California teams, who frequently find themselves placed in brackets with UCLA or USC, two of the top programs in the country.
“To get out of the first round, you’ve got to either be really, really good and take one of the highest seeds, or you’re likely going through Los Angeles,” UC Irvine coach Scott Juniper said.
In the last three years, Juniper’s team has flipped that script. Now it doesn’t matter how good you are or how high a seed you have, if you have to go through Irvine, you’re not getting to the second round.