On Monday morning, the Benedictine University softball learned they will be traveling to Bloomington, Ill. as the No. 7 seed in the 2012 NCAA Division III Softball Tournament.

The Eagles have been selected to face the No. 2 seed, Linfield, at 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 10. Benedictine is currently 33-9 on the year while the NCAA defending champions of Linfield are 38-5. Benedictine swept the Northern Athletics Conference Tournament for the second straight year to earn the automatic bid while Linfield, who lost the Northwest Conference Championship Tournament to regular-season runner-up Pacific Lutheran, received an at-large berth to the regional tournament.

The eight-team Bloomington, Ill., regional features three teams from the latest national rankings - IWU is No. 8, defending national champion Linfield (Ore.) as the No. 2 seed, and No. 20 Carthage is the No. 3 seed.

The NCAA selection committee announced the 61-team Division III playoff field Monday morning as part of a streamed internet selection show on NCAA.com. Thirty-five conferences were granted automatic qualification and six independents were selected for the 2012 championship. The 19 remaining teams were selected on an at-large basis from automatic qualifying conferences and the remaining independent institutions.

Six regional sites will have eight teams competing to advance while seven teams will compete at one regional site and six teams will compete at another regional site. All regional sites will use a double-elimination format.

For complete information on the 2012 Bloomington, Ill. Regional, please visit the BenU Information Page.