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Provo • Having secured a fourth straight NCAA Tournament appearance by winning the West Coast Conference regular-season title last Saturday, BYU's No. 13-ranked women's soccer team was hoping for better news than it got on Monday when the seedings and bids were announced.
The good news: The Cougars will play host to Utah Valley University on Saturday at 1 p.m. at South Field in a first-round game.
The bad news: The winner will face the Stanford-San Jose State winner, most likely Pac-12 champion Stanford, in Palo Alto, Calif., in a second-round game.
Stanford handed BYU (15-2-2) one of its two losses on Sept. 7 at Stanford in a match that was supposed to be played in Hawaii a few days earlier but was rained out.
Stanford received one of four No. 1 seeds and will host SJSU on Friday at 8 p.m.
Utah Valley (14-6-1) won the Western Athletic Conference tournament championship after finishing tied for second in the regular season. The Wolverines defeated host Seattle 2-0 in the tournament final to qualify for their first-ever NCAA Tournament game.
This will be the third time in four years that BYU has hosted at least one NCAA Tournament game.
The schools separated by less than 10 miles in Utah County have faced each other just once before, with BYU winning 1-0 in 2012 in Provo.
The second- and third-round matches will be played at Stanford the weekend of Nov. 19-22.
Tickets for the BYU-UVU match can be purchased at BYUtickets.com or at the match on Saturday. Broadcast details will be announced when they are finalized.
Twitter: @drewjay —
Utah Valley at BYU
P NCAA women's soccer tournament, first round, Saturday, 1 p.m., at South Field