CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The 2012 America East Volleyball Champion
Binghamton Bearcats will face No. 1 overall seed Penn State in the 2012 NCAA
Volleyball Championship, the NCAA Division I Women's Volleyball Committee
announced Sunday as the 64-team field was revealed during the selection show on
ESPNU. Thirty-one conferences were awarded automatic qualification, and the
remaining 33 slots were filled with at-large selections to complete the
bracket.
The Bearcats (13-17) will face
the Nittany Lions (29-2) in University Park, Pa., on Friday, November 30 at
7:30 p.m. The winner will face the winner of Yale and Bowling Green on
Saturday, December 1.
The Bearcats are playing in their
third NCAA Volleyball Championship and it is the third time they will be
playing Penn State. The Nittany Lions swept Binghamton in both 2005 and 2009 in
University Park.
Penn State has won the national
title five times in 1999, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.
Binghamton earned the America
East's automatic bid to the NCAA Championship with a five-set win over UMBC in
the America East semifinals, followed by
a sweep of No. 1 seed Albany in the title match.
The last America East team to win
an NCAA Championship match was Albany, who beat Cleveland State in the first
round in 2007.
Teams winning both matches will
move on to regional play Dec. 7 and 8. The pre-determined regional sites are
Berkeley, Calif.; West Lafayette, Ind.; Omaha, Neb.; and Austin, Texas. All
regional semifinal games will be shown on ESPN3. Regional final games will air
on ESPNU.
The regional winners will advance
to the semifinals and final hosted by Louisville and the Louisville Sports
Commission at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Ky., on December 13 and 15.
Both national semifinal games as well as the championship game will be
broadcast by ESPN2