BERKELEY – The 26th-ranked California women's tennis team earned an at-large berth to the NCAA Championship and will face 30th-ranked San Diego in the first round on Friday in Austin, Texas, the NCAA announced on Monday. The Golden Bears bring a 12-9 record into the clash with the 12-10 Toreros. The teams will square off at 11 a.m. CDT on Friday at the Texas Tennis Center.
 
The University of Texas will host the four-team regional that includes Cal, USD, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and the Longhorns. Eighth-seeded Texas plays the Islanders in a first-round match at 2 p.m. CDT on Friday. The two first-round victors will play in the second round at 4 p.m. CDT on Saturday for the right to advance to a super regional at a site TBA.
 
"We're excited to be selected," Cal head coach Amanda Augustus said. "That's part of the tradition of our program – competing in the NCAA Championship. We're looking forward to a rematch with San Diego to start the tournament. We played them way back in January, and we've improved a lot since then."
 
Cal hosted San Diego in the ITA Kickoff Weekend in Berkeley, with the teams meeting in the final of the four-team event. The Toreros defeated the Bears, 4-1, at the Hellman Tennis Complex to advance to the ITA National Team Indoor Championship in Seattle, where USD lost all three of its matches.
 
The Bears ended the regular season winning four of its last five matches and then split its two matches at the Pac-12 Championship last week. The Toreros went 2-3 to end the regular season and then lost to LMU, 4-3, in the WCC Tournament semifinals.
 
After the super-regional round, which is slated to take place on May 12 or 13 at campus sites TBA, the remainder of the NCAA team tournament will be played at the USTA National Campus in Orlando, Florida, from May 17-20.
 
Cal has a 76-40 all-time record in the NCAA Championship, including last season's run to the round of 16. In the 2022 NCAA Championship, Cal shut out Northern Arizona and Texas Tech by the same score, 4-0, in the first and second rounds, respectively, in Berkeley. The 11th-seeded Bears then traveled to Raleigh, North Carolina, where they lost to sixth-seeded N.C. State, 4-0, in the round of 16.
 
The fields for the NCAA Singles Championship and the NCAA Doubles Championship will be announced on Tuesday. The NCAA individual tournaments will run from May 22-27 at the USTA National Campus.