UCLA highlights NCAA committee's seedings preview as No. 10
— -- The NCAA women's basketball committee released its current top-10 seeds Monday, and nine of them are not surprising.
No. 10 UCLA, however, is. The Bruins are 16-5 overall, 8-2 in the Pac-12 and ranked 14th in the latest Associated Press poll. They are one of three Pac-12 schools in the NCAA's top-10 seeds, and their five losses are the most of any of those 10 teams.
Nos. 1 and 2, of course, are the two remaining undefeated teams: 10-time national champion UConn and South Carolina. Notre Dame, which has made the Final Four the last five years in a row, is the NCAA's third seed, followed by Big 12 rivals Baylor and Texas.
Ohio State is sixth, followed by Arizona State and Oregon State, two Pac-12 schools that face off Monday night (ESPN2, 11 p.m. ET) in Corvallis, Oregon.
A second Big Ten team, Maryland, comes in at No. 9. The Terps are ranked No. 5 in the AP poll and tied atop the Big Ten with the Buckeyes at 8-1. Ohio State won 80-71 at Maryland on Jan. 2; the teams meet again on Feb. 8 in Columbus, Ohio. That game next week will be part of an ESPN2 doubleheader, which tips off with UConn at South Carolina (7 p.m. ET).
UCLA, Oregon State and Arizona State are Nos. 8, 9 and 10 in the NCAA's RPI as of Monday. Another Pac-12 school, Stanford, is actually No. 6 in the RPI, but not among the NCAA's top-10 seeds. The Bruins' last NCAA tournament appearance was in 2013; they won the WNIT title last season.
The NCAA also released four other teams Monday that were in the discussion to be among the top 10 seeds. It listed them alphabetically, not in the order in which they were considered: Florida State, Louisville, Mississippi State and Texas A&M.
The committee will release its top 10 twice more during the regular season, on ESPN2's Big Monday telecasts Feb. 15 and Feb. 29. The 2016 tournament bracket will be revealed on Monday, March 14, at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN.
The women's NCAA tournament gets underway at the campus sites of the top-16 seeds on March 18-21. The regional sites will be March 25-28 at Bridgeport, Connecticut; Lexington, Kentucky; Dallas; and Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
The Women's Final Four is April 3-5 at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.
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