LA JOLLA, Calif. – There are four women's basketball teams left in the NCAA Division II West Region Basketball Championships and three of them are ranked in the top 10 in the country.

No. 2 UC San Diego (30-0), No. 5 Northwest Nazarene (29-2) and No. 8 Alaska Anchorage (29-2) all will play in the regional semifinals Saturday in California. The fourth team, Azusa Pacific (25-5), is no slouch either, checking in at No. 24 in the rankings.

For the Nighthawks and the Seawolves, it will be the third time in 20 days they have played and the second consecutive year they have met in the first or second round of the national tournament.

"I just think it is something you'd never see at the Division I level because the NCAA hasn't made the investment to change it," Anchorage coach Ryan McCarthy said. "And I don't necessarily think that is a financial issue. I think it is a spending-time issue, because NAIA has less money and they do a true bracket. You would never see two top-10 teams face each other in the second round."

The NCAA Division II tournament relies on regionalization, which sends teams to the first three rounds based on geography, not ranking. So, if a certain part of the country or a certain conference is uber-talented, then those teams will have to duke it out for the right to move on.

This type of bracket also applies to NCAA Division III and has caused brutal early matchups between Whitman and Whitworth on the men's side in recent years.

"It is interesting that you have three of the top five or six teams in the country in this bracket," NNU coach Steve Steele said. "If it was Division I, I think you'd have three teams that could've been No. 1 seeds in different regions."

The NCAA Division II women's tournament started in 1981-82 as a 16-team bracket. It expanded to a 24-team bracket in 1983, a 32-team setup in 1988 and the 64-team field in 2003.

The NAIA tournament began in 1981 and has a 32-team bracket that is played in one location, spread out over a week. NAIA has separate Division I Division II tournament brackets.

"I think it is unfair to the student-athletes," McCarthy said. "The ladies on both teams work really hard all year long to put themselves in a position to make a run and to not see the best eight teams at the end is not fair to us, it's not fair to NNU and it's not fair to UC San Diego."

A potential compromise floated by a coach at the West regional was to combine two of the regions, so you could at least have the chance of avoiding matchups like NNU vs. Anchorage in the second round.

Saturday's matchup between the Nighthawks and Seawolves has the feel of a Final Four matchup everywhere except in the bracket.

"I feel real bad for the seniors," McCarthy said. "We have four, NNU has (five). I feel bad for them because one of us doesn't get to practice (Sunday)."