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    UC Irvine women to play at San Diego State in WBIT opener
    • March 16, 2026

    The UC Irvine women’s basketball team was selected for the Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament (WBIT) and will travel to San Diego State for a first-round game on Thursday at 6 p.m. at USD’s Jenny Craig Pavilion. SDSU’s Viejas Arena is unavailable because it is hosting the first two rounds of the men’s NCAA Tournament.

    The Anteaters (26-6) won a share of their second Big West regular-season title in four years before losing to fourth-seeded Hawaii in a Big West Tournament semifinal on Friday. This will be the Anteaters’ first appearance in the WBIT, a 32-team event that is in its third year.

    UCI, which set school records for both overall (26) and conference (17) wins, faces an SDSU team (25-5) that won the Mountain West Conference regular-season championship before being upset by Air Force in a conference tournament quarterfinal.

    In their most recent matchup, UCI defeated the Aztecs, 55-45, at Viejas Arena in the first round of the 2023 WNIT.

    SDSU is the No. 4 seed in the Texas A&M Regional, which also includes the top-seeded Aggies, No. 2 seed Kansas and No. 3 seed Rice. The UCI-SDSU winner will next face the winner of a game between Texas A&M (14-12) and McNeese (28-5) on Sunday (Marcy 22).

    Quarterfinal games will he played in campus arenas on March 26, with those winners advancing to the March 30 semifinals at Koch Arena in Wichita, Kansas. The championship game will also be played in Wichita on April 1.

    UCI is making its sixth postseason appearance, five of which have come under Coach Tamara Inoue. The Anteaters were part of the Women’s Basketball Invitational in 2018, followed by WNIT berths in 2022 and 2023 and an NCAA Tournament appearance in 2024.

    ​ Orange County Register 

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