Iowa, ISU, Drake earn bids into NCAA women’s tourney

Three of the Iowa’s three Division 1 women’s college basketball teams will play in this year’s NCAA Tournament.

The Iowa Hawkeyes earned an automatic berth into the tournament with their win in the Big Ten Conference Tournament, but Iowa State and Drake both claimed at-large berths when the NCAA women’s selection committee announced the tournament pairings on Monday.

Iowa and Drake will both play their first-round games in Iowa City.

The second-seeded Hawkeyes will host the first and second rounds of the tournament on Friday and Sunday.

Iowa (26-6) faces 15th-seeded Mercer (25-7) at 1 p.m. Friday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

The 10th-seeded Bulldogs (27-6) take on seventh-seeded Missouri (23-10) in the second game, which tips off at around 3:30 p.m. Both games can be seen on ESPN2.

The Hawkeyes and Bulldogs are part of the Greensboro Regional.

Big 12 champion Baylor is the top seed and North Carolina State is seeded third.

Iowa State (25-8) also hosts the first two rounds of the tournament in the Chicago Regional.

The Cyclones were given a No. 3 seed and they’ll face 14th-seeded New Mexico State (26-6) in the first round at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday. The game can be seen on ESPN2.

The other game, which tips off at 2:30 p.m. on ESPN2, at Hilton Coliseum in Ames is sixth-seeded DePaul and 11th-seeded Missouri State,

The top seed in the Chicago Regional is Notre Dame. Stanford is the No. 2 seed.