March 9, 2014
INDIANAPOLIS – The University of the District of Columbia women's basketball team has earned a No. 5 seed in the NCAA Division II East Regional Tournament hosted by Bentley University Friday, March 14th – 17th in Waltham, MA. The East Coast Conference champion Firebirds will take on No. 4 Stonehill, an at-large selection from the Northeast-10 Conference, in the first round.
Tenth-year head coach Lester Butler, Jr. guided the Firebirds to the program's first ECC Tournament championship in its third year as a member of the conference. With Saturday night's 67-57 ECC Finals victory over LIU Post on Saturday night, UDC earned the conference's NCAA Tournament automatic bid. This is the women's basketball program's sixth appearance in the NCAA Tournament and the third under Butler, Jr.
UDC also reached the NCAA Tournament from the old South Atlantic Region in 1988 and 1989, the old East Region (now the Atlantic) in 1995 and 2009, and most recently, as a member of the current East Region in 2012. The program's deepest run in the NCAA Tournament came in 1989 when the Firebirds reached the Elite 8 before falling to eventual NCAA Champion, Delta State.
Bentley, the No. 1 ranked team in the nation, earned the top seed and the right to host the East Regional for the fourth season in a row. The Falcons will take on the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference champion and No. 8 seed, Bloomfield, in the first round. A pair of Northeast-10 schools will go head-to-head in the first round as No. 2 Adelphi takes on No. 7 New Haven, and ECC at-large selection - No. 3 seed LIU Post - will square off against another Northeast-10 at-large, No. 6 seed, Assumption. Game times are still to be determined.
The winner of the East Regional Tournament will advance to the NCAA Division II Women's Basketball Elite 8 hosted by Gannon University in Erie, PA.
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