WALTHAM, Mass. -- It's been eight years since the Bentley University women's basketball team won their 10th regional championship and made their most recent trip to the Elite Eight.

Coach Barbara Stevens and her team will be looking to end that drought tonight when they host sixth-seeded Pace University in an All-Northeast-10 NCAA Division II East Regional final. Tip-off at the Dana Center is set for 6 pm, and with men's regional championship, between Bentley and Bloomfield, following at 8:30 pm.

Coincidentally, the scenario is the same as in 2003 when Bentley last claimed the regional title. That was the last year that the Falcons hosted the regional, and the Elite Eight that season was in St. Joseph, Mo., also the site of this year's event.

Awaiting the winner will be a national quarterfinal game against Clayton State of the Southeast Region next Tuesday afternoon.

Bentley reached the regional championship for the first time since 2007 and the 17th time in 24 years with a pair of wire-to-wire wins, the top-seeded Falcons defeating eighth-seeded C.W. Post by eight (75-67) and number four Assumption College by 13 (77-64).

Pace, which came in as the sixth seeded, ended Franklin Pierce's three-year reign as regional champ with a 64-62 first round win and knocked off second-seeded Holy Family in convincing fashion in the semis, 89-72.

Bentley and Pace met once during the regular season with the Falcons never trailing en route to a 73-61 home court victory on Jan. 29. Freshman forward Jacqui Brugliera (Fitchburg/Wachusett Reg. HS) had a double-double (17 points, 10 rebounds), and junior guard Katherine Goodwin (Goffstown, N.H./Governors Academy) made five-of-six shots for 14 points.

These two programs have met once previously in the Sweet 16, back in 2001, with the Setters prevailing 86-75 to earn the trip to the Elite Eight.

Bentley enters tonight's game with a six-game winning streak, and 12 wins in its last 13. Coach Barbara Stevens' club is 27-4 overall, the program's highest win total since 2005 when they finished 28-8.

Brugliera, the Northeast-10 Rookie of the Year, has posted back-to-back double-doubles in her first two career NCAA games. The team's leading scorer (14.8) and rebounder (9.0) for the season, she put up 25 points and 13 rebounds against C.W. Post and had 14 points and 14 rebounds in the semis against Assumption.

A couple other first-year players have also played well in the regional. Courtney Finn (Winthrop/Winthrop HS), a sophomore guard who missed last year with a knee injury, has totaled 26 points in the two games, and freshman forward Lauren Battista (North Easton/Oliver Ames HS) has averaged 11 points and 10.5 rebounds.

Junior six-footer Shatasia Kearse (Framingham/Lincoln-Sudbury Reg. HS) has come off the bench to average 10 points, Goodwin has nailed four of ten three-pointers, and senior guard Kim Brennan (Locust Valley, N.Y./Locust Valley HS) has averaged 7.5 points and 5.5 assists. Brennan ranks fifth on Bentley's all-time scoring list with 1,665 points.

Pace, 24-8, has won six of seven with the only blemish over that stretch coming in OT at Saint Rose in the NE-10 semis. It's been a strong finish for the Setters who started at 14-2 before running into a few bumps in the road midseason (five losses in nine games).

Senior forward Brittany Huggins has been deadly from three in the regional, burying nine of 13 from beyond the arc while averaging a team-best 20 points. Sophomore forward Brittany Shields has also had a very good tournament, averaging 18.5 points and 8.5 rebounds. She had four points in the final 25 seconds against Franklin Pierce to erase a two-point deficit and give her team the victory.

Those two are also Pace's top scorers for the season, with averages of 14.3 and 14.1, respectively. Huggins has made 66 three-pointers with a 44 percent success rate from downtown, and Shields is the primary rebounder for the Setters, averaging eight a game.

Two players who have stepped up during the regional are guards Lisa Welsome and Carol Johnson. Welsome has averaged 11.5 points, four-and-a-half points higher than her season-norm, and Johnson has provided a spark off the bench, averaging 8.5 points, 5.5 assists and 4.5 rebounds.

Bentley is the highest scoring team in the Northeast-10, averaging 73.7 points, and Pace is the second best defensive club, giving up just 54.9 a game. The two clubs are 1-2 in the conference in turnover margin with Pace at plus 4.3 and Bentley at3.9.