Nov. 12, 2012

Tulsa, Oklahoma -

2012 NCAA Bracket

The Tulsa men's soccer team earned the No. 11 seed and a first round bye in the NCAA Championships, as announced today by the NCAA. The Golden Hurricane will take on the winner of the South Florida-Florida Gulf Coast game on Sunday at the winners' home field.

"I think both teams are possession oriented teams, teams that are good going forward and have a number of good attacking guys," Head Coach Tom McIntosh said. "Both games will be entertaining games and we are just looking forward to playing either one. The one thing we do in non-conference is play one of the tougher schedules in the country. We've already played South Florida, and we've played three teams that were seeded, including UCLA, Creighton and New Mexico. Our guys have played in the environment that they are going to play in throughout the course of the NCAA Tournament. At this point there are no freshmen and sophomores, we are all soccer players and we understand what we need to do."

The Golden Hurricane (13-5-1) will make its eighth appearance in the NCAA Championship this week after earning Conference USA's automatic bid yesterday with a 5-0 win over SMU in the C-USA Championship. TU's NCAA appearances have come in 1991, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2012. Tulsa has a 7-7-1 mark in tournament play.

Tulsa dropped a 2-1 decision to then fourth-ranked South Florida in the third game of the season, but has not faced FGCU this year.