She strolled into the room wearing her Lady Lions sweatshirt and warm-up pants like it was any other press conference, except this time junior guard Tanisha Wright was sporting a slightly different look.

A ring of purple beads -- the kind of beads freely thrown about the French Quarter just before Lent -- hung around Wright's neck as a symbol of where the members of the Penn State women's basketball team hope the season's path will take the them: to New Orleans and the NCAA women's Final Four.

Yesterday was selection Sunday, the day when the NCAA tournament selection committee announces the first-round pairings of all 64 teams in the championship field. A few hours before Wright adorned her Mardi Gras regalia, the No. 4 Lady Lions (27-5, 15-1) sat at the house of their coach, Rene Portland, waiting anxiously to see if their season of hard work would be rewarded with a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament.

The tournament brackets were released. The Lions got their No. 1 seed in the East bracket. And smiles were all around. Their first-round opponent will be No. 16 seed Hampton at Virginia Tech's Cassell Coliseum in Blacksburg, Va.

Then, the bad news.

Penn State found itself squarely atop the East region as the No. 1 seed, yes, but opposite the Lions, on the bottom of the bracket, is four-time, defending national champion Connecticut (25-4, 14-2), a veteran group that would be a tough out in any tournament situation. What's worse for the Lions is where they would have to play the Huskies if the two were to meet in the regional final: in UConn's back yard at the Hartford Civic Center.

The Penn State women opted to maintain a positive attitude, however, as they brushed aside any suggestion that they were at all concerned about potentially facing one of the most dominant programs in women's hoops mere miles from its campus.

When asked what's the advantage of being No. 1 when it means possibly facing UConn on its home floor, Portland grimaced and said: "I'm not sure how to answer that question. ... You play the hand that's dealt to you."

As they always seem to do, the players who were present, Wright and senior guard Kelly Mazzante, followed their coach's lead and shed a positive light on the situation. Nothing was going to ruin their celebration on this day.

"It's an unbelievable opportunity, and we want to take advantage of it," Mazzante said.

The hot topic was certainly UConn, but Penn State will have more than just the Huskies to worry about if they hope to get to the Big Easy. The first task will be in Blacksburg. Assuming the Lions take care of business and dispatch Hampton in the first round, Penn State will face either conference rival Iowa or Virginia Tech on the Hokies' home floor in the second round.

And with the Lions presumably the lowest ranked of the four No. 1 seeds, the East bracket is stacked with quality teams, making it the deepest of the four regions. The four seed is North Carolina, which dealt Penn State one of its five losses of the year when it physically dominated the Lions on its way to a 73-60 victory at Chapel Hill, N.C. The five seed is Notre Dame, a feisty squad that beat UConn for one of the Huskies' four losses of the season. Houston, the three seed, and Colorado, the six seed, are two other teams that have played in and won big games this year.

It won't be an easy road to achieving their ultimate goals, but the Lions have said since the beginning of the season that they knew it wouldn't be. And the team that has suffered two straight loses in the round of 16 is now fully aware of what it has to do -- and who it will have to face -- to satisfy those expectations.

"If we just made to the Sweet 16, then I don't think we would consider this year a success," Wright said. "We just have to pass that [barrier]; we have to get past that."