BATON ROUGE – The LSU Soccer team will compete in the NCAA Division I Women’s Soccer Tournament for the fifth time in program history after the Tigers were rewarded for an outstanding season with an at-large selection on Monday afternoon to face South Alabama in a first-round match in Mobile on Saturday at 7 p.m. CT.
The Jaguars (17-2-2) are the first ever Sun Belt Conference team to host an NCAA First Round match after sweeping SBC regular seasons and tournament titles this season.
The Tigers (13-5-4) are set to make their return to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in five seasons following their run to the SEC Tournament semifinals last week. They solidified their at-large selection with two 2-1 wins over Kentucky and Missouri to push their unbeaten streak to six-straight matches before Friday’s 1-0 semifinal defeat to Texas A&M.
This marks the fifth time in the last nine seasons under 11th-year head coach Brian Lee that the Tigers will compete in the NCAA Tournament’s Field of 64 as they also qualified in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2011.
The winner of Saturday’s first-round match will advance to face either No. 1 national seed Florida State (14-2-4) or Evansville (6-10-3) in the Round of 32 in a potential clash in Tallahassee, Florida, next weekend. LSU has twice advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament in its four previous appearances after picking up first-round wins over Samford in 2007 and Arkansas-Pine Bluff in 2009.
“This season has gone great for our girls so far, they have worked so hard. It’s been a nine-month process, and everyone has played a huge role in helping us get to this point,” Lee said. “We’ve talked all year about our reason for wanting to get here is because we think we have a team that can accomplish some great things in the tournament.
“Our first game against South Alabama is a monumental challenge. They’re a talented team, 16th in the RPI. The coach there, Graham (Winkworth), has done an unbelievable job there building their program.”
Saturday’s match will be the 10th meeting all-time between LSU and South Alabama on the soccer pitch as the Tigers hold a narrow 5-4 edge in their nine previous matches dating back to the program’s inaugural season in 1995. The two sides last met five years ago when opening up the 2010 regular season at the LSU Soccer Stadium in Baton Rouge.
Team captain Alex Arlitt is one two fifth-year seniors on the squad along with Lexi Gibbs that were members of LSU’s last NCAA Tournament team in 2011. The Tigers feature an experience class of nine seniors who will look to make a deep run in this year’s NCAA Tournament in their final season in the program.
“It’s just all come full circle for us,” Arlitt said of ending her collegiate career right where it started in the NCAA Tournament. “When you come in as a freshman, you never think that it might be your only chance to really get to this point. This is a program that deserves these moments. We’ve worked so hard as a team to get back here, and now we need to focus on our preparation to take this season as far as it can go from here.”
Fellow team captain Natalia Gomez-Junco also has NCAA Tournament experience of her own while competing as a freshman with the Conference USA Champion Memphis Tigers during the 2011 season.
“We have put in so much work since the end of last season to get back into the tournament,” Gomez-Junco said. “We’ve come together as a team. I think our performance late in the season and in the SEC Tournament shows that. Right now, it’s just focusing on preparing one day at a time this week, having a great week of practice and getting ready for Saturday.”
The Tigers return to NCAA postseason play with a 13-5-4 mark on the season following their run to the SEC Tournament semifinals last week as the No. 7 seed after finishing in seventh place overall on the league table. They have completed one of the great turnarounds in college soccer in 2015 by qualifying for this year’s NCAA Tournament field after finishing at 5-13-2 as a team a season ago.
The Tigers are not the only team from the Southeastern Conference to earn a berth into this year’s NCAA Tournament field as five other programs will also step onto the field in the first round this weekend.
LSU was picked with Auburn, Florida, Ole Miss, South Carolina and Texas A&M as part of the Field of 64 as six SEC programs in all are set to compete in the 2015 NCAA Division I Women’s Soccer Tournament. Florida was awarded a No. 2 national seed after sweeping SEC regular season and tournament titles this fall, while Auburn was also given a No. 4 national seed on the strength of its performance this season.
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