ESPN College Sports

Now that the bracket is out, here are the answers to the five biggest questions heading into the first and second rounds of the NCAA women's soccer tournament.

1. Who are the favorites?

It was all so nice and neat last season when North Carolina and Notre Dame entered the NCAA Tournament as the overwhelming favorites and lived up to those expectations on their way to meeting in the national championship game.

But if last season's bracket was paint by numbers, this year's version was inspired by Jackson Pollock. There is order in there somewhere, but good luck finding it.

• Texas A&M and Portland, two of the top three teams in the final regular season NSCAA top 25 poll, didn't earn No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament.

• Stanford, which not only didn't win the Pac-10, but finished third behind UCLA and USC, earned a No. 1 seed. The Trojans, like the Aggies and Pilots, earned a No. 2 seed.

• Defending champion North Carolina, despite losing a home opener for the first time in program history and dropping a total of three games, is once again a No. 1 seed.

At least seven or eight teams have legitimate title aspirations, and probably four or five more beyond that group could make runs of their own if they catch enough breaks. But without diminishing the potential of No. 1 seeds Stanford or Penn State, not to mention other contenders, three teams begin play this week with the kind of expectations associated with favorites.

The overdue offense: UCLA isn't the highest-scoring seeded team in the bracket -- Florida State, Texas A&M and Purdue all average more goals per game -- but no team can match the Bruins in individual offensive talent. And after four consecutive College Cup appearances, and five in the past seven years, no program is more overdue for its first national championship.

The Bruins were dangerous enough when the thunder-and-lightning combination of Lauren Cheney (20 goals and nine assists) and Danesha Adams (11 goals and eight assists) fed off the creativity of midfielder Christina DiMartino (five goals and seven assists), but they've been close to unstoppable since reabsorbing Kara Lang following the midfielder's run with the Canadian national team in the World Cup.

Lang has six goals and three assists in just 12 games, helping the Bruins increase their scoring average to 2.7 goals per game in that stretch, despite facing the toughest part of their schedule.

With shutouts in eight of their last nine games, the Bruins also display plenty of proficiency in front of their own goal, although stalwart defender Erin Hardy's postseason status is unclear after an injury-plagued regular season.

The home-field advantage: If Texas A&M does reach the College Cup for the first time in program history, it will play all but one of its postseason games at Aggie Soccer Stadium, where the Big 12 regular-season champs are 22-1-1 since the start of the 2006 season. That record of success includes a win against North Carolina a year ago, which proved to be the only loss of the season for the eventual national champion Tar Heels.

Not that Texas A&M relies exclusively on familiar surroundings. Coach G. Guerrieri's team posted a 3-2-1 record in six road games this season against NCAA Tournament teams, including a 1-1 tie at Penn State and a 2-1 loss at North Carolina.

One thing Texas A&M must prove is that it has the offensive depth to complement star Ashlee Pistorius on the biggest stage. Prior to a 2-1 loss against Texas in the final of the Big 12 tournament in which the Aggies fell despite accumulating 33 shots from a wide array of players, Pistorius had accounted for two of the team's three goals and nine of its 15 shots in losses against North Carolina and Missouri, the team's only regular-season setbacks.

The experience: Overlook North Carolina at your own peril.

Sure, the Tar Heels turned in a somewhat pedestrian offensive performance this season (at least by their standards -- most teams would happily settle for averaging 2.08 goals per game). And sure, the defending champions looked like a young team playing without departed senior Heather O'Reilly's leadership when they dropped early games against South Carolina, William and Mary and Miami. But at the end of the day, the Tar Heels swept the ACC regular season and conference titles and allowed the fifth-fewest goals per game in the nation despite playing 15 games against NCAA Tournament teams.

This is still North Carolina, and as long as Anson Dorrance is around, that means something in November.

The defense may be able to keep the team in every game from here on out, but from Casey Nogueira and Yael Averbuch at the top down through Tobin Heath, Nikki Washington (who scored a goal in each of the team's three conference tournament games), Whitney Engen, Meghan Klingenberg and others, the Tar Heels must start putting more shots on goal.

1a. So which teams makes it to College Station, Texas for the College Cup?

I'll take North Carolina, Texas A&M, Penn State and Portland.

2. Which site is a fan's paradise and a coach's nightmare for the first weekend?

College Station is the place to be for the final weekend of the season, but it's not a bad place for fans to start the journey, either.

Of course, Texas A&M's Guerrieri may not feel quite so blessed.

Ranked first or second in the major polls for most of the second half of the season, the Aggies probably lost out on a chance to stay home throughout the NCAA Tournament when they lost to Texas in the final of their conference tournament. Had the Aggies swept the conference titles, it would have been difficult to deny them a No. 1 seed in the big bracket. Instead, Texas A&M is a No. 2 seed with a potential quarterfinal showdown looming on the road against Stanford.

At least they have some extra motivation for a potential second-round rematch with the Longhorns.

For reasons beyond the scope of human intellect, the NCAA selection committee decided regular-season schedules and conference tournaments simply didn't give teams enough of an opportunity to play league foes. Texas-Texas A&M is a heck of a rivalry on the soccer field, but did we really need to see it potentially three times before the third round of the NCAA Tournament? After meeting once in the regular season and once in the conference tournament, the two teams could meet in the second round.

And those two teams aren't alone. The selection committee built a bracket that could provide as many as seven second-round games between teams from the same conference. Last year, only three such possibilities existed and only two of those (Wake Forest-Virginia and Stanford-USC) came to fruition. What better way to reward teams like A&M, Georgia, Purdue and others for their conference success than by making them play teams that have had multiple opportunities to scout them and play against them?

Kristin Fasbender, Assistant Director of Championships for the NCAA and liaison to the Division I Women's Soccer Committee, said a measure has gained preliminary approval that would eliminate conference opponents from meeting in the first two rounds, as is the case in volleyball and softball, potentially beginning as early as next season.

The only good news is that at least in College Station, we may actually get to see some new teams square off. Texas A&M should be able to get past Stephen F. Austin in the first round, but Texas has one of the most intriguing opening games against BYU.

Watching two finishers like BYU's Katie Larkin and Texas' Kelsey Carpenter should be worth the price of admission.

Since the action in College Station plays out on Thursday and Saturday, because of BYU's stance against competing on Sundays, a fan with time and airfare could shuttle over to the Bay Area to see top-seeded Stanford, Santa Clara, California and Sacramento State. Assuming the Cardinal get past the Big Sky champs in the opener, either an injured-but-dangerous Santa Clara team or Pac-10 rival Cal would be a big roadblock in the second round.

3. What is the best potential third-round game?

Sure, sequels are often constructed out of less quality material than originals, but that doesn't seem to make anticipating them any less enjoyable.

And every once and awhile, you even get something like Nirvana's "Nevermind" album.

Almost a year to the day after they met for the national championship on a neutral field that was anything but neutral in Cary, N.C., Notre Dame and North Carolina will be able dispense with the faux neutrality should they meet in a third-round rematch in front of another partisan crowd in Chapel Hill. But even if the setting would be familiar, the script would be quite different.

Notre Dame's season to date was well summed up by its loss in penalty kicks against West Virginia in the final of the Big East tournament. The Irish didn't play particularly cohesively or with quite the same abandon as the Mountaineers, but the sheer volume of their individual skill created the majority of chances that either team produced in regulation or overtime. They were good enough to win, but things didn't quite come together at the right time or place.

Of the six players who started at least 20 of Notre Dame's first 21 games, three weren't around for last year's title game. (Carrie Dew was injured, Elise Weber was at Wisconsin and Lauren Fowlkes was in high school.) The Fighting Irish have a lot of the pieces back from last season's juggernaut, but keeping them on the field together has been difficult.

What was last season a battle of the two best teams in college soccer would this year be as much a tactical struggle between a surprisingly limited North Carolina attack and a patchwork Notre Dame defense that has already allowed nearly twice as many goals as it did last season.

But whichever team advanced would have far too much talent not to be considered one of the favorites, no matter which other teams joined it in the quarterfinals.

4. Which team has the biggest gripe about being left out?

Unlike last year, when both Oregon and Dartmouth had ample evidence to back up feeling unjustly slighted, it's harder to nitpick when looking at the back end of this year's bracket. Several teams that were left out can make strong cases for why they should have been included, but none of them appear to have the selection committee dead to rights.

Loyola Marymount may the strongest case as No. 65. The Lions finished tied for third with Santa Clara at 4-3-0 in the competitive West Coast Conference. In addition to that winning conference record, the Lions went 3-3-1 against teams that are in the field of 64, including wins against Cal State Fullerton, Hawaii and Sacramento State and a tie against Indiana. Ultimately a slow start, hardly surprising given the unexpected departure of coach Gregg Murphy last spring, may have left the Lions with too much ground to make up.

Nearby Long Beach State also seemed like a strong candidate for at-large consideration after tying Cal State Fullerton atop the regular-season standings in the Big West. Long Beach suffered one-goal losses against Fullerton, Wake Forest, Clemson and BYU.

5. Who or what are you most looking forward to seeing?

Ashlee Pistorius: Heather O'Reilly didn't win the Hermann Trophy as the nation's top player last season, but leading her team to a national championship in front of local fans at the College Cup in Cary, probably soothed that wound for the college legend.

A standout senior for Texas A&M with 23 goals in 21 games this season, and 79 goals in 93 career games, Pistorius is one of the front-runners for this year's Hermann. But should she fall short in that race, duplicating O'Reilly's farewell in front of her own home fans at the College Cup in College Station would be equally sweet.

Meghan Klingenberg: Speaking of the defending champs, O'Reilly received plenty of support during the postseason title run from Casey Nogueira. A talented freshman who had, until then, been largely a reserve for Anson Dorrance's team, Nogueira came up big time and time again during the NCAA Tournament. Could Klingenberg be next?

A different kind of attacking player than Nogueira, Klingenberg has nonetheless had an impact on Carolina's struggling offense during the second half of this season. She was in Dorrance's starting lineup for the final of the ACC tournament against Florida State and responded by serving the ball that Nikki Washington finished for the game's only goal.

Claire Zimmeck and Brittney Steinbruch: One more entry on the Tar Heels theme.

Zimmeck, a junior forward for William and Mary, and Steinbruch, a freshman forward for Miami, are connected by a claim that few other players in the history of women's college soccer can make: They beat North Carolina.

Both players scored the lone goal in their respective teams' 1-0 upset wins against the Tar Heels, but both also scored 15 other goals and rank as two of the most talented finishers in the country. Neither team is expected to get out of the first weekend of play -- William and Mary will face Georgetown in a terrific opening-round game in a pod hosted by the University of Virginia, and Miami will play a red-hot Florida team in Gainesville in the first round -- but anything is possible with proven giant-killers like Zimmeck and Steinbruch.

Virginia's defense: Granted, the Cavaliers enter the NCAA Tournament having scored just one goal in their last four games, but if there is any team in the country that can win with defense, it's this one. Led by senior central defenders Becky Sauerbrunn and Nikki Krzysik, the Cavaliers allowed just seven goals in 20 games. They posted 14 shutouts, including holding NCAA Tournament teams Santa Clara, William and Mary, Colorado, Duke, Wake Forest and Miami (twice) without a goal.

Offense may be more exciting, but anything is compelling if executed well enough. And few defenders do a better job of controlling the field than Sauerbrunn and Krzysik.

Portland vs. UCLA: If the bracket worked out any other way, I would have picked these two teams to play for the title. Instead they could meet in a quarterfinal in Los Angeles for the second year in a row. Last year's game was a thriller in which the Pilots took a 1-0 lead, only to watch the Bruins rally back for a 2-1 win on goals from McCall Zerboni and Cheney.

Between Cheney, Adams, DiMartino, Lang, Val Henderson, Angie Woznuk, Stephanie Lopez, Sophie Schmidt and Michelle Enyeart, there might be as many as nine future World Cup players on the field at one time. That's a compelling quarterfinal.

Graham Hays is a regular contributor to ESPN.com's soccer coverage. E-mail him at Graham.Hays@espn3.com.