The American Athletic Conference champion UCF women’s basketball team returns to NCAA Tournament for the third time in the last four years. Katie Abrahamson-Henderson and the Knights earned the league’s automatic bid to the tournament and are the seventh seed in Storrs, Connecticut.

UCF (25-3) will take on the 10th seed Florida (21-10) on Saturday, March 19. The game tips at 3:30 p.m. on ESPNews.

The winner of the first-round matchup will take on the winner of second-seed UConn (25-5) and Mercer (23-6) in the second round.

Sunday’s selection marks UCF’s seventh NCAA Tournament appearance since joining the Division I ranks in 1984-85. Each of UCF’s first four appearances had been via an automatic berth, winning the Atlantic Sun Conference Tournament twice (1996, 1999) and capturing a pair of the Conference USA Tournament titles (2009, 2011). The Knights earned the first at-large bid in program history for the 2019 tournament and again in 2021. UCF won its first American Athletic Conference tournament title on March 10 to earn the automatic bid in 2022.

For the third straight NCAA Tournament, UCF has earned its highest seed in program history. The Knights enter the 2022 tournament as a No. 7 seed and were previously being seeded as high as 10th in 2021.

UCF’s NCAA Tournament History

Year      Seed      Round                 Opponent                         Result

1996      #16         First Round        #1 Louisiana Tech             L, 98-41

1999      #16         First Round        #1 Louisiana Tech             L, 90-48

2009     #14         First Round        #3 North Carolina             L, 85-80

2011       #13         First Round        #4 Ohio State                    L, 80-69

2019      #12         First Round        #5 Arizona State                L, 60-45

2021      #10         First Round        #7 Northwestern               L, 62-51