The 2016 NCAA Women’s College Cup kicked off this past weekend. Penn State, the 2015 champion, kicked off the opening round by steamrolling their opponent, Bucknell, 6-0. As always, though, it is a wide open field, with strong teams across different conferences and a few players from the Olympics looking to make a big impact.
The women’s field features the full 64-team bracket, across four regions, with top seeds playing at their home grounds. Only the top four teams are seeded in each region. Here is a recap of the first round action. (Note: The regions don’t use the typical North, South, East, West names. Thus we will identify them based on the number one seed in each region.)
Stanford Region
The top three seeds easily advanced, while number four Minnesota fell at home to NC State in penalties. Round two will feature multiple matches with former champions — UVA vs. Penn State and Stanford vs. Santa Clara.
Stanford 4-0 Houston Baptist
Santa Clara 3-0 Long Beach St.
Pepperdine 1-1 California (Pepperdine in PKs)
NC State 0-0 Minnesota (NC State in PKs)
Virginia 4-1 Monmouth
Penn State 6-0 Bucknell
Rutgers 3-0 Harvard
Georgetown 2-0 St. Francis (Pa.)
South Carolina Region
All four seeded teams advanced through round one, including two from the ACC. However, it was the South Carolina Gamecocks that took the headlines with a 7-0 crushing of Alabama State. A UNC/South Carolina clash is possible, but still several rounds away.
South Carolina 7-1 Alabama State
Colorado 3-1 Oklahoma State
Oklahoma 1-0 SMU
BYU 2-0 UNLV
Clemson 1-0 Northeastern
Arkansas 2-1 Memphis
Kansas 1-0 Missouri
North Carolina 3-0 Liberty
West Virginia Region
WVU was led by two Canadian internationals and Olympic bronze medalists, Ashley Lawrence and Kadeisha Buchanan. Meanwhile Notre Dame, a two seed playing at home, fell in penalties to Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, which opens up the top half of the bracket for two seed Duke.
SIUE 0-0 Notre Dame (SIEU in PKs)
Northwestern 3-0 Kent State
Illinois State 2-2 Michigan (Illinois State in PKs)
Duke 3-0 Charlotte
UCLA 3-0 Seattle
Nebraska 0-0 South Dakota St. (Nebraska in PKs)
Ohio State 3-2 Dayton
West Virginia 3-0 Northern Kentucky
Florida Region
The final region saw all of the higher seeds win in the opening round. Additionally, all matches were settled in regular time. The top seeds cruised at home with a combined total score of 14-1.
USC 3-1 Eastern Washington
Texas A&M 1-0 TCU
Utah 1-0 Texas Tech
Florida State 4-0 Samford
Auburn 4-0 South Alabama
Connecticut 4-2 Albany
Wisconsin 1-0 Marquette
Florida 3-0 Florida Gulf Coast
Round 2 Match-Ups & TV Schedule
The second round kicks off Thursday night with a few games, including action from one seed South Carolina. Then the rest of the round completes Friday night, again at the top seeds' home fields.
The headline matchups of round two are Virginia vs. Penn State and Ohio State at West Virginia.
Matches will air across ESPN3, conference specific channels (i.e. SEC Network, ACC Network), and the NCAA.com website.
