St. Louis University’s women’s soccer team’s win over Massachusetts on Sunday not only gave the Billikens’ their seventh straight Atlantic 10 Conference title, it also probably made the difference between SLU being at home in the first round or having to go on the road.

SLU got a No. 8 seed, the lowest seed that gets to host a first-round game, as the NCAA field was announced on Monday. It will play Kansas on Friday night at Hermann Stadium at 7 p.m. If SLU wins, barring a parade of upsets in its part of the bracket, it will be on the road, most likely heading to Los Angeles, where No. 1 seed Southern California (15-1-3) awaits, assuming it gets past Sacramento State (5-6-9) in its first game.

“Sure did,” said SLU coach Katie Shields. “That’s what the committee definitely told us.”

SLU was No. 21 in the NCAA's RPI and could have expected better, but the selection committee did vary from the RPI positions often in assigning seeds; Western Michigan, which was one spot above SLU at No. 20, was unseeded and plays a No. 5 seed, Michigan State, in the first round. Meanwhile, Pepperdine, 18 spots below SLU at 39th in the RPI, got a seven seed.

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“It’s all good,” Shields said. “Happy to be seeded, happy to be at home.”

SLU has a 14-1-6 record and is unbeaten in its past 16 games, but got a tough draw in Kansas. The Jayhawks (13-5-4), under first-year coach Nate Lie, have won eight in a row, culminating in the Big 12 championship on Sunday, knocking off the top three seeds in the conference to win it. The Jayhawks were No. 27 in the RPI.

“Kansas is a great team,” Shields said. “We’re super familiar with a lot of their team, just being close by. (Midfielder) Elise Le played for their coach for four years at Xavier, so there’s a lot of familiarity.”

There’s also familiarity because Shields has recruited heavily out of the Kansas City area. Five players on SLU, including two starters, defender Sophia Stram and forward Hope Kim, are from the greater Kansas City area. (Kansas has no players from SLU.) “It’ll be familiar, but not friendly,” Shields said.

“I know a couple of the girls,” said Stram, who’s from Kansas City but wasn’t recruited by Kansas. “We have a lot of Overland Park, Kansas, girls on our team, so it’ll be fun for them to see familiar faces, I’m sure.”

This will be the third consecutive season SLU has opened the NCAA Tournament at home after being a No. 6 seed last season and a No. 2 the year before that. SLU, the only A-10 school to make the tournament, faced Kansas in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in 2018, losing on the road 2-1 in overtime.

“Being a seeded team is an incredible testament to the consistency of our women in our program,” Shields said, “and then obviously that means you get to play at home, which we’re thrilled about. … I still think that we have our best soccer in front of us, because that’s what we’ve been doing over the two, two-ish, weeks.”

Missouri State (13-4-3) won the Missouri Valley Conference championship and will face No. 3 seed Iowa (13-2-5) in the first round on Friday. Lindenwood won the Ohio Valley Conference tournament, which normally would have given it an automatic berth in the field of 64, but the NCAA makes teams ineligible to compete in the tournament in the first four years of moving from Division II to Division I; this is year 3 for Lindenwood.

In the Division III tournament, Washington University (17-0-2) will face DePauw in the first round on Saturday at 5:30 p.m. at Francis Field, and if it won would face either Wisconsin-La Crosse or Simpson at 7 p.m. Sunday in the second round. Wash U. lost in the championship game last season.

The Division II field will be announced next Monday.