Women's soccer seeded ninth

By Blake Twisselman

The 2003 NCAA women's soccer tournament bracket was announced Monday as the Broncos prep for their 15th straight postseason appearance. The Broncos received the ninth overall seed in the tournament, despite being No. 3 in the NSCAA/Adidas National Rankings.

"We definitely got screwed," said senior defender Chardonnay Poole. "There's a lot more obstacles we'll have to get over. But I look at it as if they want Portland and UNC out of the tourney the best way to do it would be to play us."

Santa Clara begins their NCAA Tournament run Saturday at home against Stanford. The Cardinal is 10-8-2 this season, and the Broncos defeated Stanford 2-0 on the road earlier in the year.

"Stanford has struggled a little bit this year," said freshman goalkeeper Julie Ryder. "But on any given day they have the ability to beat anybody in the country."

Joining Santa Clara in their quarter-bracket are No. 1 North Carolina and No. 5 Portland. The Tar Heels, with their 20-0-0 record, were the obvious choice for the No. 1 seed. Much like the Broncos, Portland (16-3-1) was also seeded lower than their ranking, garnering the eighth seed.

"The only thing I'm disappointed about is that we should have been seeded higher than Portland," said Julie Ryder. "We beat them head to head and won the conference uncontested."

Santa Clara Head Coach Jerry Smith agreed.

"The fact that we were not seeded ahead of Portland was very strange to me," explained Smith. Santa Clara defeated Portland 2-1 in double overtime on Nov. 2, and eventually won the West Coast Conference title over the second-place Pilots.

Still, Smith was able to put a different perspective on the fact that Santa Clara beat out Portland for the conference title but didn't receive a higher seed.

"Often times the rankings and the seedings are not that close," said Smith. "But to be league champions, and go undefeated in our league, we were definitely surprised with the seeding. We also played 11 teams on our schedule that are in the tournament, and we were playing so well at the end of the year."

Santa Clara went 6-3-2 against other tournament teams this season, with losses to Virginia, Notre Dame, and Southern California. The Broncos have accumulated a 9-0-2 record since their loss against USC on Sep. 26.

The tournament's top eight are North Carolina, Notre Dame, Florida, UCLA, Penn State, West Virginia, Virginia, and Portland.

The Santa Clara-Stanford winner will play the winner of the Cal Poly-Arizona State game on Sunday at 1 p.m. at Buck Shaw Stadium. Both Cal Poly (18-1-2) and Arizona State (12-4-3) are currently ranked in the top 25 national rankings.

"Right now, we're not so interested on who is in our bracket," said Smith. "We're just trying to focus on who our next opponent is, and in this case it's Stanford."

Brian Betz contributed to this article. Contact Blake Twisselman at (408) 554-4852 or jtwisselman@scu.edu.