TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – After winning its fifth ACC Championship in the last six seasons on Sunday, Florida State earned the conference’s automatic bid to the 2018 NCAA Women’s Soccer Championship. The Seminoles (15-4-2) were selected as a No. 1 Seed in the tournament for the seventh time in school history and will host Loyola Chicago (11-6-1) in the first round on Friday, November 9 at 7:00 p.m.
Loyola Chicago received the automatic bid to the NCAA Championship after winning the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament Championship for the first time in program history to secure its first appearance in the NCAA Tournament since 2007. Friday’s match will serve as the first meeting between the Seminoles and the Ramblers.
“We’re looking forward to welcoming their team here to Tallahassee and we’ll start to do some more research,” FSU head coach Mark Krikorian said. “They played some very good teams very well. I know that they played Notre Dame and competed favorably and against Wisconsin as well. We will start to do our homework and do the best job that we can to prepare for them.”
Florida State will host the first round of the NCAA Tournament for the 15th time in program history and the tenth in a row. The Noles are 41-1-0 all-time when playing in front of their home crowd at the Seminole Soccer Complex during the NCAA Tournament. They have won their last 24 contests at home in tournament play and have recorded 13 consecutive home shutouts in the NCAA Women’s Soccer Championship.
“Over the course of time we’ve been pretty good at home,” Krikorian added. “I think there’s a lot of comfort in sleeping in your own bed and having that regular life rather than getting on planes and sleeping in hotels and eating at restaurants all the time. I think it’s certainly an advantage that all of us work hard to try and get.”
The Seminoles are a combined 9-3-2 against teams that made the field of 64, with five wins against nationally-seeded teams, including three in route to the program’s sixth ACC Championship.
“Those [ACC] teams are just loaded with talent,” Krikorian said. “They’re very well coached and we expect the same from our next opponent and hopefully beyond if we’re successful later this week. Playing that level of competition three, four, five games in a row certainly has us battle tested.”
The ACC is very well-represented in this year’s NCAA tournament field, with 10 teams earning tournament bids from the conference, five of which earned national seeds. North Carolina joins Florida State as a No. 1 seed, with Virginia earning a three-seed and Duke and Boston College both received No. 4 seeds. Clemson, Wake Forest, Virginia Tech, Louisville and NC State rounded out the ACC’s at-large selections.
Tickets are available now at this link – NCAA First Round Tickets. Streaming and live stats links will be posted on the soccer schedule page on Seminoles.com.
Throughout 2018-19, the Seminoles will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of women’s intercollegiate athletics at Florida State and there are many events and reunions planned for all women’s sports. Head to www.seminoles.com/50th/ for more information that will be updated throughout the year.
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