source: wbuathletics.com
The Wayland Baptist Flying Queens are seeded third in their quadrant of the NAIA Women’s Basketball National Championships, presented by Ballogy, and will welcome teams from Idaho, Kansas and San Antonio at next week’s Opening Round in Plainview.
The Sooner Athletic Conference regular-season and tournament champion Flying Queens, with their 29th overall and ninth consecutive qualification in the national tourney, will be joined by Lewis-Clark State (Idaho), MidAmerica Nazarene (Kansas) and Our Lady of the Lake when Wayland hosts the Opening Round March 11 and 12.
Bracket
The Flying Queens’ 29 national tourney appearances are the second-most of any team participating this year, one behind Campbellsville (Ky.).
Riding a 12-game winning streak, the Queens (31-3) are the highest seed in Wayland’s Opening Round and will play the lowest seed, Our Lady of the Lake (20-10), seeded 14th in the quadrant. Tip-off is tentatively set for 6 p.m., with Lewis-Clark St. (27-4), seeded sixth, and MidAmerica Nazarene (18-11), seeded 11th, tentatively set to square off at 8.
Saturday’s final, at a time to be announced, will send the winner to the NAIA National Championship final site, presented by Bomgaars, in Sioux City, Iowa, where they will be joined by 15 other teams in the hunt for the title at the Tyson Events Center from March 17-22.
The WBU-OLLU opening-round game will be a rematch of the teams’ Nov. 13 meeting in the Hutch during the Queens Classic. Wayland won that contest, 78-56. Under first-year coach Jillian Flores Bennett, the Saints won just two of their first 11 games – including losses to the SAC’s Oklahoma City, Science & Arts, and Texas Wesleyan, in addition to Wayland – before getting red-hot. Since Dec. 11, OLLU has lost only one game, and the Saints have won their last 16 in a row, including going 14-0 in winning the Red River Athletic Conference.
OLLU is making its 10th overall and first national tourney appearance since 2019. That year, the then seventh-ranked Saints made program history by advancing all the way to the semifinals. After knocking off No. 12 Wayland in the round of 16, 96-93, on a 3-pointer with 2.4 seconds left, OLLU fell to OCU, 85-70, in the semis. (OCU lost in the finals to Montana Western, 75-59). OLLU qualified for the 2020 national tourney before that event was cancelled due to COVID-19.
“I think at first the girls were surprised we were playing someone we’ve already played this season in the first game. But, ultimately, they are excited to be in the tournament and excited to be able to play at home,” Cooper said. “It will be interesting to say the least. OLLU is a well-coached and solid team.
Should Wayland defeat OLLU, the Flying Queens would take on either Lewis-Clark St. or MidAmerica Nazarene.
“Everyone is good at this point, so you just have to go out there and be ready to play your best against whoever shows up,” Cooper said.
Lewis-Clark St., in the national tournament for the 24th time, comes to Plainview after losing in the Cascade Conference Tournament championship to Southern Oregon, 56-34. Prior to that loss, the Warriors had won 18 games in a row (not counting two COVID forfeits). In fact, the Warriors only other on-court loss all season was to Eastern Oregon on Dec. 17, 72-70.
The Flying Queens are 1-3 all-time against the Lewis-Clark State Warriors, last meeting in the first round of nationals in 2014 in Frankfort, Ky., with Wayland falling, 85-79.
A member of the Heart of America Conference, the MidAmerica Nazarene Pioneers – making its 15th appearance in the national tourney, last played Feb. 26, losing to then No. 14 Clarke (Iowa) in the conference tourney semifinals, 67-61. Clarke went on to win the title.
MNU, which went 14-5 in conference play, owns a 2-1 advantage in the all-time series against the Flying Queens. WBU won the most recent meeting early in the 2017-18 season at a tournament hosted by John Brown University in Arkansas, 78-55.
Looking ahead to the final site, the winner of the WBU Opening Round will take on the winner of an Opening Round in Billings, Mont., where Rocky Mountain (Mont.) is the No. 2 seed in the quadrant. They’ll have to get by No. 15 Reinhardt (Ga.), No. 7 Hope International (Calif.) and No. 10 Dakota State (S.D.).
Thomas More (Ky.) is the No. 1 seed Wayland’s quadrant.
All opening round games at Wayland will be live streamed at no cost at www.wbuathletics.com/watch. Tickets will be available at the gate.
Stay tuned to www.wbuathletics.com in the days ahead for more information about the Opening Round.
This year’s Opening Round field includes 38 automatic qualifiers and 26 at-large selections. Automatic berths were given to teams that either won their respective conference tournament title, regular-season championship, finished runner-up at the conference tournament, were the third regular-season finisher or were selected by the final conference ARC rating. The at-large bids were determined by the Women’s Basketball National Selection Committee. This committee consists of one representative from each geographical area and six at-large members. The committee evaluated teams throughout the year on various criteria.
Four Sooner Athletic Conference teams qualified. Besides Wayland, they are Mid-America Christian, Science & Arts of Oklahoma and Texas Wesleyan. This will be the second national tourney appearance for MACU, the third for TXWES, and the fifth for USAO.