Women's Soccer: Ivy winners draw West Virginia in NCAAs

Two days after winning sole possession of the Ivy League title, the women’s soccer team learned its first NCAA tournament foe when the full bracket was released late Monday afternoon. Princeton (13-3-1 overall, 7-0 Ivy League) will visit No. 17 West Virginia (11-4-4) in the first round of the tournament at 7 p.m. Saturday.

The Mountaineers won the Big 12 regular-season championship in their first season in the conference, going 7-0-1 in league play before being upset by Texas Christian University in the quarterfinals of the Big 12 Tournament. West Virginia is the only team this season to have defeated No. 1 Stanford, beating the Cardinal 1-0 in August.

Princeton has won 11 consecutive games, including a 4-2 victory over Penn on Saturday that secured the Tigers’ automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. The Tigers were not ranked in last week’s coaches’ poll, but they received more votes than all but three teams outside the top 25 and could move up today when this week’s rankings are released.

Dartmouth, which placed second in the Ivy League, was a candidate to receive an at-large berth with a top-40 ranking in the Ratings Percentage Index, but the Big Green was left out of the final field of 64.

West Virginia and Princeton have faced off once before, also in the first round of the NCAA tournament, when the Mountaineers beat the Tigers 2-1 in 2008. Princeton has not returned to the postseason since, but West Virginia has made the tournament for 13 straight years.