The NCAA announced the pairings for the 2005 Women's Soccer Championship Tournament Monday, and ASU was left off the list of 64 teams for the second consecutive year.
"I expected not to make it," soccer coach Ray Leone said Monday.
Pac-10 champion UCLA was awarded a No. 1 seed and will face Southwestern Athletic Conference Champion Mississippi Valley State in the first round. The Bruins will also have home-field advantage for the first two rounds of the tournament.
California received a No. 3 seed and will face Rice in the first round.
The other three Pac-10 representatives in the tournament will be Stanford, USC and UA.
Leone said the conference should get more teams but is unable because of its very competitive region.
"It's disappointing that the Pac-10 didn't get more teams," he said. "The ACC gets seven or eight teams every single year. We could've sent seven or eight."
The first- and fifth-place teams in the Pac-10 were only separated by three victories.
The Sun Devils could have impressed the selection committee in the last weekend of the season with a victory against USC or a draw against UCLA, but lost both contests.
ASU finished in a three-way tie with UA and Washington State for third place in the conference. The final conference standings were similar to last season for ASU, where it finished in a three-way tie for fourth place and was also left out of the tournament.
Two teams that ASU defeated during the regular season made the tournament, including UA. The Wildcats will face Utah in round one.
ASU defeated Weber State 5-2 in the second game of the season, but the Wildcats went on to win the Big Sky Conference, granting them an automatic bid.
In total, the Sun Devils played against nine teams that made the tournament, going 2-6-1 against those squads.
The tournament starts Friday and will end Dec. 4 with the College Cup Championship in College Station, Texas.
Reach the reporter at thomas.j.kelley@asu.edu.