Cleveland bracket loaded in women’s NCAA tournament

North Carolina, Ohio State, LSU and Duke were selected Monday as the No. 1 seeds for the women’s NCAA basketball tournament.

All four have started atop the NCAA brackets before, but the overall top seeded Tar Heels are the only ones already with a national title. It’s the third No. 1 for North Carolina, seeking a second championship since 1994.

The Atlantic Coast Confernece and Big East have the most teams in the field with seven, followed by the Southeastern and Pacific-10 with six each.

North Carolina, ranked atop the final AP poll, and No. 2 Ohio State each won their regular season and conference championships.

North Carolina (29-1) was placed in the Cleveland Regional and will open Saturday in Nashville against Big West champion UC Riverside.

Six-time national champion Tennessee is seeded second in the Cleveland bracket, and Big East regular season champion Rutgers is third.

“It’s like the Final Four!” Tar Heels coach Sylvia Hatchell said of the tough Cleveland Regional. “I don’t know how any bracket can get tougher than our bracket. … But hey, that’s just the way it is. We have to go play those games.”

Duke’s road to the Final Four runs through Connecticut – and that means a possible matchup with homestate favorite and No. 2 seed UConn. The Blue Devils (26-3) are in the Bridgeport Regional, as are the five-time national champion Huskies, who are in their 18th tournament.

LSU (27-3), aiming for its third straight trip to the Final Four, is in the San Antonio Regional. The Lady Tigers open Saturday against Atlantic Sun champ Florida Atlantic in Norfolk.

Oklahoma, seeded No. 2 in the San Antonio Regional, opens against 15th seed Pepperdine on Saturday in Denver.

Stanford is the third seed in the San Antonio bracket and also opens in Denver on Saturday against Southeast Missouri State.

Ohio State (28-2) landed in the Albuquerque Regional, where second-seeded Maryland and defending national champion Baylor await. The Terps handed North Carolina its only loss this season.

Ohio State plays 16th-seeded Oakland, the Mid-Continent champ, in their opener Sunday in West Lafayette, Ind. Baylor, the No. 3 seed, plays Big Sky champion Northern Arizona, the 14th seed, Saturday in Tucson, Ariz.

Pac-10 power Arizona State is the fourth seed in the Albuquerque bracket and also opens in Tucson against 13th-seeded Stephen F. Austin, champions of the Southland Conference.

Huskies seeded ninth

Washington’s late-season slide didn’t turn out to be costly.

Despite losing their last three games, the Huskies picked up their first NCAA tournament nod since 2003. Washington is the No. 9 seed in the San Antonio Region and will play No. 8 Minnesota in the first round at 8 a.m. PST Saturday in Nashville, Tenn.

“We started out the year and people doubted us,” Washington coach June Daugherty said. The Huskies were picked to finish seventh in the Pac-10 coaches’ poll, but finished fourth.

“We kind of took on the underdog role all year,” she said.

Women’s NIT

Indiana State is getting another chance to win a tournament championship.

The Sycamores (26-5), who have the best record among the teams left out of the NCAA women’s tournament, were among the 40 schools receiving berths in the WNIT on Monday night.

Indiana State finished three games ahead of runner-up Drake in winning the Missouri Valley Conference regular-season title, but lost to seventh-seeded Missouri State in the finals of the league tournament, which was played in Missouri State’s arena.

Drake and the MVC’s third-place team, Northern Iowa, also made the WNIT field.

The WNIT was expanded from 32 to 40 teams and starts with eight preliminary round games starting Wednesday. The championship game is March 31.

Other teams in the tournament include Western Kentucky (24-6), the East Division champion in the Sun Belt; Western Illinois (23-6), the regular-season champion in the Mid-Continent; James Madison (24-6), the runner-up in the Colonial Athletic Association; and Wisconsin-Green Bay (23-6), the co-champion in the Horizon League.

Oregon State from the Pac-10 and Santa Clara from the West Coast Conference, the only schools from their conferences in the field, play in the preliminary round Thursday at Oregon State.

Idaho State from the Big Sky opens Friday at Kansas State.