NCAA Tournament Central

SEATTLE -- For the past two weeks, the Seattle Pacific Falcons have played in women's basketball games that had a championship feel to them -- even though they weren't officially championship games.

They're expecting the same kind of feel tonight.

And this time, it is a officially championship game.

For the third year in a row, the Falcons will play for the NCAA Division II West Regional crown, and they'll do it on their homecourt in Royal Brougham Pavilion. Seattle Pacific and Chico State tip off for the title at 7 p.m.

Tickets are available throughout Monday in the SPU athletic office on the second floor of Brougham Pavilion, and at the ticket window beginning one hour before tip-off. Prices are $12 reserved, $8 general admission and $5 for students and Seattle Pacific faculty with proper identification.

Tonight's winner earns a trip to St. Joseph, Mo., for next week's D-2 Elite Eight. The final segment of this year's national tourney begins Tuesday, March 23, with quarterfinals, followed by semifinals the next day and the title game on Friday, March 26. Seattle Pacific last made the Elite Eight in 2005, when it went all the way to the final in Hot Springs, Ark., before falling to Washburn, 70-53.

SPU (26-3) earned its return trip to the regional championship game on Saturday night with a gut-wrenching 52-48 victory against Alaska Anchorage in the semifinals. That's the same school that has claimed the last two regional finals in Brougham at the Falcons' expense, winning in 2008 by a 50-44 count and prevailing again last year, 54-42.

It was just a week ago Saturday in Anchorage that the Falcons wiped out a late seven-point deficit to score a 67-60 victory against the Seawolves that clinched sole possession of the Great Northwest Athletic Conference crown. Had Alaska Anchorage won, it would have been a three-way tie for the title between the Falcons, Seawolves and Western Washington.

Chico (23-9) has been the surprise team of this year's tourney, knocking off a pair of higher seeds to make it to Monday. In last Friday's first-round contest, the sixth-seeded Wildcats stunned No. 3 seed Western Washington, 79-68, after having lost to the Vikings by 21 points in a December preseason tournament at Bellingham.

Then in Saturday's semis, Chico overcame a 12-point second-half deficit to dismiss seventh-seeded and fellow California Collegiate Athletic Association member Humboldt State, 86-76. The Wildcats were down 62-50 with 10 minutes to play, but finished the game on a 36-14 scoring run.

Seattle Pacific, which opened the tournament last Friday with a 65-52 victory against Hawaii Pacific before following up with Saturday's win against Anchorage, already has played Chico State once this year. The Falcons pulled away to a 63-44 victory on Dec. 21 at the GNAC-CCAA Challenge in Bellingham. That was one day after Chico, which got off to a 5-0 start, was handed an 80-59 drubbing by Western Washington.

“We have to take (care of) every possession because Chico is a very good team, and they have improved a lot since we played them in December,” SPU head coach Julie van Beek said shortly after beating Alaska Anchorage on Saturday. “The bottom line is we're going to enjoy (the win over the Seawolves), but we still have another step to climb. We've never been to the Elite Eight with this group of kids, and we want to do that.”