GREENSBORO, N.C. -- Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) women's basketball tournament champion North Carolina A&T State learned its NCAA Championship destination on Monday night and the Aggies are off to South Bend, Indiana.
N.C. A&T State (19-11, 12-4 MEAC) was the 16th seed in the Lexington Region and will face top-seeded Notre Dame (31-1) on Saturday night at 6:30 pm in Purcell Pavilion on the University of Notre Dame campus. The game will be broadcasted on ESPN2 as part of its “whiparound coverage” which takes viewers to all four games in the 6:30 pm time-slot.
The Aggies are making their third NCAA Championship appearance, returning to the tournament for the first time since 2009. They enter the NCAA tournament having won nine of their last 10 games, and 15 of their last 18.
North Carolina A&T State won a share of the MEAC regular-season title with Bethune-Cookman, then took the conference tournament championship at the Norfolk Scope Arena last weekend, defeating Florida A&M (67-50), Hampton (63-54) and Coppin State (65-46) to earn the MEAC's automatic berth into the NCAA Division I Championship.
The Aggies have had at least 19 wins in each of the four years under head coach Tarrell Robinson. North Carolina A&T State is led by red-shirt junior center Aprill McRae (13.3 ppg., 6.4 rpg.), an All-MEAC Second Team selection, who dropped 25 points in the Aggies' MEAC Tournament semifinal win over Hampton en route to earning MEAC Tournament Most Outstanding Player honors.
North Carolina A&T State also gets contribution from All-MEAC Third Team selection in redshirt senior guard Dana Brown (11.5 ppg., team-high 64 3-pointers made), as well as sophomore guard Kala Green (9.7 ppg., 2.4 apg., 1.5 spg.) and redshirt senior guard Christina Carter (7.4 ppg., team-high 3.7 apg.).
Eighth-seeded Georgia and ninth-seeded Indiana will play in the second game on Saturday night in South Bend with the winners advancing to a Monday night matchup for a spot in the Sweet 16.