Owls Earn NCAA At-Large Berth
5/1/2012 12:00:00 AM | Women's Tennis
May 1, 2012
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The Rice women's tennis team will return to NCAA action for the first time since 2006 when they face Illinois in the first round of the Oxford Regional which will be hosted by the University of Mississippi.
First round action will get underway on Friday, May 11 at the Palmer/Salloum Tennis Center/Galtney Courts. Rice (16-8) will face the Illini (17-6) in one match, while Southern (10-10) will meet host and 16th overall seed Ole Miss (17-8) in the other. The winners will meet on Saturday to decide a berth in the NCAA Championships at the University of Georgia, May 17-22.
Illinois defeated Rice 5-1 at Jake Hess in early April in a match that was added to the schedule after an earlier road match vs. UAB had been rained out.
"It's a very exciting day for our program," Rice head coach Elizabeth Schmidt said. "The team has certainly worked hard to get here with all the hours they've put in on the court and in the gym. Everything we do is a testament to their hard work. "
Even with a solid top 40 ranking and a spot in the C-USA finals, Schmidt knew the Owls we far from guaranteed an opportunity to continue playing, a fact that weighed on her mind while waiting for the NCAA Selection webcast to begin. The show was originally scheduled for 4 p.m. central but was bumped back an hour due to storms in Indianapolis, home of the NCAA Headquarters.
"I felt like we've had a really good season and that our players deserved it, but at the end of the day we were a bubble team. I'd be lying if I said I didn't go back and forth wondering if we were in or not, especially with the extra time we had to wait."
The Owls earned their first at-large bid since 1998 after finishing as the runner-up in the Conference USA Championship to Tulsa. They earned the automatic bid in 2006 when they captured the C-USA crown and earned at-large selections in their other three years.
This is their fifth overall berth in the NCAA team championships (2006, 1998, 1997 & 1996). The Owls are 0-4 in NCAA action, losing to LSU 5-3 in '96; Texas A&M 5-3 in '97, 5-0 to Arkansas in '99 and 4-0 to TCU in '06.
