LA JOLLA, Calif. – After winning a seventh CCAA Tournament Championship in a nine-year span over the weekend, the UC San Diego women's soccer team received an automatic bid into 2008 NCAA Soccer Championship field of 48, it was announced on Monday. The third-seeded Tritons will face No. 6 seed BYU-Hawaii Thursday evening in the first round of the West Sub-Regional hosted by Seattle Pacific University.

The winner of the UCSD-BYU match-up will advance to face No. 2 seed SPU on Saturday afternoon.

Fourth-seeded San Francisco State will square off with No. 5 Cal State Dominguez Hills in the other West Sub-Regional, with top-seeded Western Washington awaiting the winner.

The Tritons claimed the California Collegiate Athletic Association’s automatic berth after winning the conference tournament title on their home field on Sunday. UCSD advanced past No. 2 seed San Francisco State in a penalty kick shootout in the semifinals Friday night, before easily dispatching of fourth-seeded Cal State Dominguez Hills 3-1 in the championship match two days later.

Unbeaten in 10 of their last 11, the Tritons enter the NCAA Tournament with an overall record of 14-3-4.

Kickoff for UCSD’s match with the Seasiders is scheduled for 7:00 p.m. at Seattle Pacific’s Iterbay Soccer Field.  

BYU-Hawaii enters the NCAA Tournament on the heels of a second-straight Pacific West Conference Championship after defeating Notre Dame de Namur 2-0 on Friday. The Seasiders finished the regular season with a 14-4-0 overall record and went 10-2-0 to claim the conference title.

"We’re definitely happy to face a team we haven’t seen this season rather than one of our conference opponents again," head coach Brain McManus said. "We don’t know a whole lot about BYU-Hawaii other than they’re a great squad. We’ll just have to prepare like we have all year long and we’ll see what happens.”

The Tritons and Seasiders have met just once before, with UCSD prevailing 1-0 on September 4, 2007 in Laie, Hawaii. Natasha Belak-Berger scored the only goal of the match in the 14th minute.

Seattle Pacific (16-1-2, 9-1-1) enters the tournament unbeaten in its last 11, outscoring the opposition 40-4 in those contests.

UCSD has qualified for the NCAA Tournament 22 out of the last 23 years and has won seven national titles during that span. The Tritons’ last national championship came in 2001, when UCSD won back-to-back titles in the program’s first two seasons at the Division II level.
 
UCSD lost in the first round of the tournament in 2007, dropping a 2-1 decision to Cal State Dominguez Hills in overtime.