No. 10 Seed Cal Hosts NCAA First, Second Rounds

BERKELEY – The California women's tennis program continues its stellar season at home this week, when the 10th-seeded and 10th-ranked Golden Bears host first- and second-round matches in the 2024 NCAA Championship. Cal earned an at-large berth into the 64-team field of the postseason tournament, the NCAA announced Monday, and welcomes 17th-ranked Auburn, No. 42 BYU and Sacramento State to the Hellman Tennis Complex, where the Bears have a 7-2 record this season. In Friday's first round, BYU and Auburn are set to play at 11 a.m. PT while Cal faces Sacramento State at 2 p.m. Friday's winners play each other at noon in Saturday's second round for the right to advance to the NCAA Super Regional.
 
"It's awesome to be hosting," Cal head coach Amanda Augustus said. "The players have worked hard for it. I'm proud of them. We're a top-10 team and we're a top-10 seed. It's a fun time of year. Hopefully, the students can take a break and come watch a little tennis on Friday and Saturday, as a study break from finals."
 
After the completion of the NCAA Super Regional (or round of 16) matches – to be hosted on campus sites May 10 or 11 – teams will play the remainder of the NCAA Championship at the Greenwood Tennis Center in Stillwater, Oklahoma, starting with the May 17 quarterfinals, continuing with the May 18 semifinals and ending with the May 19 final.
 
Cal last hosted the first weekend of the NCAA Championship in 2022, while the Bears traveled to Austin, Texas, to open the NCAA tournament in 2023.
 
The current Bears have compiled an 18-6 overall record and posted an 8-2 Pac-12 record to earn the No. 4 seed in the recent Pac-12 Championship. They won four of five matches heading into the conference tournament in Ojai, where they defeated No. 27 Arizona State in the quarterfinals and eighth-ranked UCLA – the Pac-12's regular-season champ – in the semifinals before falling to third-ranked Stanford in last Saturday's final. Cal's regular-season highlights include defeating No. 38 Illinois and No. 18 Oklahoma in the ITA Kickoff Weekend to advance to the ITA National Team Indoor Championship, a prior victory over UCLA and a win over Pepperdine – then ranked No. 3 – with the latter two matches played in Berkeley.
 
Cal achieved its greatest success in the NCAA tournament under Augustus, a member of the Cal Athletics Hall of Fame who led the Bears to the NCAA final in each of her first two seasons as head coach in 2008 and 2009. The Bears have a 76-41 record in the NCAA Championship.
 
A two-time NCAA doubles champion as a Cal player, Augustus has also coached numerous Bears to NCAA singles and doubles titles in her 17 years at the helm of the program.
 
The NCAA will announce the field for its individual postseason tournaments Tuesday. The NCAA Singles Championship and NCAA Doubles Championship are scheduled to take place May 20-25 in Stillwater, and several Bears – including the 18th-ranked doubles pair of Hannah Viller Moeller and Mao Mushika and, in singles, the 41st-ranked Viller Moeller, the 44th-ranked Katja Wiersholm and the 52nd-ranked Valentina Ivanov – are candidates for selection.
 
Stay Posted
For further coverage of the Bears, follow them on Twitter (@CalWomensTennis), Instagram (@CalWomensTennis) and Facebook (/CalWomensTennis/).