BATON ROUGE — LSU women's basketball will tip off March Madness against Rice in the first round of the 2024 NCAA Tournament, the team found out during the full bracket reveal on Selection Sunday.

The Tigers are the No. 3 seed in the Albany 2 Region and will play host to No. 14 Rice (19-14) as well No. 6 Louisville (24-9) and No. 11 Middle Tennessee State (29-4) inside the Pete Maravich Assembly Center for the first two NCAA Tournament rounds next week.

If LSU opens March Madness with a victory, it will meet the winner of the Cardinals-Blue Raiders in the second round.

Kim Mulkey and LSU enter the NCAA Tournament off an SEC Tournament runner-up finish, falling to No. 1 South Carolina 79-72 in Greenville, South Carolina last Sunday.

The Tigers (28-5) started out the season rocky, losing to Colorado in the season opener in Las Vegas but thanks to star forward Angel Reese and sophomore sensation Flau'jae Johnson, the team rallied to play its way back into a top 8 overall seed in this season's field of 68.

LSU looks to become the first team to win back-to-back national championships since Geno Auriemma and UConn in 2015 and 2016.

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Cory Diaz covers the LSU Tigers for The Daily Advertiser as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow his Tigers coverage on Twitter: @ByCoryDiaz. Got questions regarding LSU athletics? Send them to Cory Diaz at bdiaz@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: LSU vs Rice in March Madness, 2024 Women's NCAA Tournament