The No. 15 Arizona gymnastics team was selected to its 20th consecutive NCAA Regional Championship yesterday. The Wildcats will be the No. 3 seed in the six-team regional when they head to Ames, Iowa, April 8 to compete for an NCAA Championship berth.

Host No. 8 Iowa State will be the top seed in the group followed by No. 11 ASU, Arizona, No. 19 Denver, No. 21 Minnesota and No. 24 Brigham Young.

Iowa, Utah State and Southern Utah will also have individual qualifiers compete.

Arizona head coach Bill Ryden said he was pleased with his team’s seeding in the regional.

“”I was actually a little surprised by the teams in the bracket,”” Ryden said. “”It could very well be the most competitive bracket in the country.””

Arizona has faced BYU, ASU and Denver twice this season, placing behind the Sun Devils in a dual meet in January and last week at the Pac-10 Championships. The Wildcats split two meets with Denver this year and beat BYU in both of their matchups this season.

While Arizona hasn’t seen host Iowa State or Minnesota this year, Ryden said both teams have put up impressive scores all season.

Ryden was also excited about Arizona’s overall rotation, starting out on floor exercises after a bye in the first rotation. After floor, Arizona will go to the vault, then have a bye in rotation three and will head to the uneven bars before finishing on balance beam.

“”I really like our rotation. We’re a good floor team, even though we didn’t perform well last week,”” he said. “”I think finishing up on bars and beam will be good for us, and our floor team is good enough to get us off to a good start.””