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Sixth-seeded Cavs pack bags for NCAA quest

When the women's NCAA basketball tournament bracket was announced Sunday, many of the decisions made by the selection committee may have caused some people to scratch their heads.

Pac-10 champion Stanford was given a two seed despite being the No. 1 team in both AP and ESPN/USA Today polls. Purdue (16-12, 9-7 Big Ten) and Oklahoma (17-13, 8-8 Big Twelve) received at-large bids while Gonzaga (27-3, 14-0 West Coast) and Villanova (19-11, 10-6 Big East) were left out of the tournament. Locally, a head-scratcher was the committee's decision to send Virginia (20-10, 8-6 ACC) westward to Minneapolis to play in-state rival Old Dominion (22-8, 15-3 Colonial).

"The higher-seeded teams are put in locations based geographically in relation to their seed," Selection Committee Chair Lynn Parkes said. "The teams in the middle to lower parts of the bracket will fall depending on how they were seeded. I'm sure it does look a little strange to see two teams that are that close to be playing 1,000 miles away, but that's just simply where the seeds fell."

The other game in Virginia's opening round bracket features third seed Minnesota playing against No. 14 St. Francis. The Golden Gophers will be the host team, a right they earned by going 24-7 and advancing to the Big Ten championship game. Despite having to travel far and possibly play Minnesota on their home turf in the second round, the Virginia players seem unfazed by the upcoming trip.

"I know Minnesota is far, but it's still basketball," senior LaTonya Blue said. "It doesn't change anything. It might be a different atmosphere, but the game doesn't change."

Virginia head coach Debbie Ryan also is not about to question the selection committee's decision to send her team nearly 1,189 miles to the west, but she did call the match-up with Old Dominion intriguing and wondered why another team from Virginia was sent with them.

"I thought if we did match-up with a Virginia team, we would be in the state of Maryland because I thought that was the closest region," Ryan said. "I thought they would put us there for attendance purposes. I don't question the committee -- I just think that for attendance purposes that would help them."

Another interesting component about Virginia's first round is that it is a rematch of a game played earlier this season between the two teams. The Cavaliers won the first time around, 72-64, when the Lady Monarchs traveled to Charlottesville in December. Rematches are something the committee tried to avoid, Parkes said.

"There are times when we are tied because of the number of teams we have from a particular conference," she said. "It would be our preference that they not meet, but there are times when we simply cannot make it happen."

One fact that Parkes may be referring to is that the ACC leads all conferences by having seven teams in the pool of 64. Of those seven teams, North Carolina was rewarded with a No. 1 seed in the Tempe, Ariz. bracket.

"We don't keep a tally of how many teams we have from a specific conference," Parkes said. "Obviously, because of the strength of the teams [in the ACC], they have an opportunity to play more often against top-25 and top-50 teams, so that's a benefit for them"

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