SEC Fields Seven Teams; Bye for CS Long Beach : Women’s seedings: USC, despite loss to UCLA in season finale, and CS Fullerton each will play host to first-round games.

The selection committee’s job to create the field for the NCAA women’s basketball tournament became even more complicated when the regular season ended with upsets among the ranks of the elite. Even so, things went pretty much as expected.

Penn State, Virginia, Tennessee and Georgia--the top four teams in the country--were given No. 1 seedings in a tournament dominated by the Southeastern Conference, with seven of the 48 berths.

The Pacific 10 and Big West conferences will send a combined seven teams, all but Washington State being put in the West Region. Representing the Southland in the West are USC, Cal State Long Beach and Cal State Fullerton.

Long Beach (23-7), which won the Big West tournament, got the first-round bye it hoped for, and USC (17-11) and Fullerton (24-7) will play host to first-round games.

Surprisingly, unranked USC was seeded fifth and given a home-court advantage, despite losing its season finale to UCLA.

“I thought that would have kept us from getting a home court. . . . Yes, I’m a little surprised,” USC Coach Marianne Stanley said.

The Trojans--in the tournament for the first time since 1988--will face a Utah team that wouldn’t have been selected if it hadn’t upset Creighton in the Western Athletic Conference tournament to gain automatic entry.

Should it get by Utes, USC will play at No. 21 Long Beach on Saturday.

Long Beach is one of five teams that have been to the tournament every year since the NCAA began sponsoring women’s championships in 1981. The others are Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee and Louisiana Tech.

The 49ers have won 15 consecutive games since starting off 8-7. Winning the Big West tournament over Cal State Fullerton probably clinched the first-round bye.

If winning the tournament was beneficial to Long Beach, losing in the first round to unranked New Mexico State was detrimental for No. 15 Nevada Las Vegas.

Although the Rebels will play host to the West Regional March 21-23, there is a good chance they won’t be in it.

UNLV (24-6), which tied Long Beach for first place in the Big West, was seeded eighth and will face a tough Texas Tech team in the first round at Las Vegas. If the Rebels win, they will travel to Georgia to play the fourth-ranked Bulldogs.

Fullerton, seeded seventh, will play Louisiana Tech on Wednesday. The Techsters, in the top 10 every week in the 1980s, barely made the tournament at 18-11.

No. 1-ranked Penn State (29-1) will play at home Saturday against the winner of the James Madison-Kentucky game.

No. 2 Virginia (27-2) opens as the Midwest’s top-seeded team next Sunday at home against Stephen F. Austin or Mississippi.

No. 3 Tennessee (25-5), tops in the Mideast, will open at home Saturday against the Southwest Missouri State-Tennessee Tech winner.