For the first time in 17 years, the Georgetown women’s basketball team is back in the NCAA tournament.

With the team and their coaches seated in the Hoya Banquet Room in Leavey Center, joined by a collection of fans and half a dozen TV cameras, the Lady Hoyas watched Monday evening as they were given a No. 5 seed in the Memphis region of the bracket.

The 2009-2010 Hoyas (25-6) officially added another accolade to their already historic season, possibly the best in school history. The Hoyas already set a school record with a 16-game winning streak from November to January and climbed through the national rankings on a weekly basis. The Hoyas are currently ranked 13th in the country by both the Associated Press and ESPN/USA Today Coaches’ Polls. The Hoyas have also set a new program record with 25 victories thus far, with more possibly on the way.

The Blue and Gray had been considered a lock for the tournament for well over a month, especially after victories over DePaul, Rutgers, St. John’s and Notre Dame, but their conference season came to a sudden halt after a triple-overtime loss to the Scarlet Knights in their first game in the Big East tournament.

Georgetown’s current players were still toddlers when the Blue and Gray made its first appearance in the Big Dance in 1993. That Hoya team was a six-seed and made it all the way to the Sweet 16, defeating 11th-seeded Northern Illinois 76-74 and then upsetting three seed Penn State, 68-67, before losing to two seed Virginia 77-57.

The 2010 Georgetown squad will first square off against 12th-seeded Marist in Berkeley, Calif., on Saturday. The Blue and Gray are 5-5 against other teams in the tournament, which includes seven Big East teams. Aside from Gerogetown, the Connecticut Huskies, who own a national-record 71-game win streak, are the No. 1 overall seed, while the other five teams are seeded second (Notre Dame), third (West Virginia), sixth (St. John’s), ninth (Rutgers) and 11th (DePaul).

Last year, the Lady Hoyas made a deep run in the Women’s National Invitational Tournament (WNIT), notching three victories to put them into the quarterfinals, where they fell to Boston College. Georgetown is one of a number of teams, including one seed Nebraska, that are playing in the NCAA tournament after making the WNIT last year.

arist finished as regular-season champions of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC), compiling a 26-7 overall record and a 15-3 conference record.

Tip-off is set for 8:21 p.m. on Saturday, March 20 at the University of California, Berkeley. “