USC out; UC Riverside has ticket to L.A.

A team representing the Southland will play in the Galen Center on Saturday night in the first round of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament.

But it won’t be USC.

Also on Saturday evening on the Trojans’ home floor, a team representing the Pacific 10 Conference hopes to launch a push to the Final Four.

But it won’t be the Trojans.

USC, hoping to land an at-large bid despite a 17-13 record and a fifth-place finish in the Pac-10, was denied a third consecutive trip to the NCAA tournament when the pairings were announced Monday on ESPN.

The Trojans, though, are still playing host to first- and second-round games Saturday and Monday in the Galen Center, and the last of four games Saturday will pit third-seeded Pac-10 runner-up Arizona State (28-4) against 14th-seeded Big West champion UC Riverside (21-10) in a Greensboro Regional opener.

“The team was disappointed, but they’re realistic,” USC Coach Mark Trakh said. “They knew it was a slight chance. With 17 wins, it’s going to be a slight chance, so they knew, they understood. They weren’t overly disappointed.”

Three other Pac-10 teams -- conference champion Stanford, California and Washington -- joined Arizona State in the 64-team field.

Duke, which lost in overtime to Maryland in last year’s final and won its first 30 games this season before losing to North Carolina State in the semifinals of the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament, was seeded No. 1 overall. Duke has reached the Final Four four times without winning a title. Also seeded No. 1: six-time NCAA champion Tennessee (28-3), five-time champion Connecticut (29-3) and 1994 champion North Carolina (30-3).

Stanford, 28-4 and ranked fifth in the nation after winning the Pac-10 tournament last week, was seeded No. 2 behind Connecticut in the Fresno Regional and will play No. 15 Idaho State (17-13) in a first-round game Saturday at Palo Alto.

Eighth-seeded Cal (23-8) plays ninth-seeded Notre Dame (19-11) at Pittsburgh in the Dallas Regional and, in the same regional, 11th-seeded Washington (18-12) plays sixth-seeded Iowa State (25-8) at Minneapolis.

Arizona State was happy to be headed to Los Angeles.

“We’re absolutely thrilled with our seeding,” Coach Charli Turner Thorne told the ESPN audience during the selection show. “As a matter of fact, when we’re done here I’ll be sending my gift baskets out to the selection committee.”

UC Riverside Coach John Margaritis, whose team was seeded 16th last year and lost to North Carolina, 75-51, in a first-round game at Nashville, said of the Sun Devils: “They’re a very good team, a very tough team. They can make you look really bad, actually, because of the way they play defense. On the positive side, it’s an opportunity for our fans to come watch us play.”

Riverside won the Big West tournament for the second consecutive year, defeating UC Santa Barbara, 70-67, in the final Saturday at Anaheim and setting a school record for victories. The Highlanders have won nine of 10 since Jan. 31, when they lost to Cal, 58-51, at Berkeley. In November, they lost to UCLA.

They are led by Big West player of the year Kemie Nkele, a three-time all-conference selection who averages 16.1 points and 8.8 rebounds. Seyram Gbewonyo averages 10.2 points.

jerome.crowe@latimes.com