The No. 13 UCLA softball team has been to the Women’s College World Series in each of the past eight years, overcoming tremendous obstacles at times to do so.

But if the Bruins are going to get back to Oklahoma City for this year’s World Series, they will have to survive one of their toughest paths yet, especially with fifth-seeded Tennessee potentially waiting for UCLA should both teams advance to Super Regional play.

“I never truly understand the reasoning behind the seeding,” UCLA coach Kelly Inouye-Perez said. “I think every road is going to be a tough one. Anything can happen with any team. Beyond looking at how or who or where people are playing, we have to focus on our first game against Loyola Marymount.”

The Bruins earned the No. 12 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament bracket announced on Sunday and will host their four-team regional this weekend, which includes Loyola Marymount, UC Santa Barbara and Hawai’i.

It will be difficult enough for the Bruins to be the team that escapes the regional to advance to Super Regional play.

Hawai’i is actually ranked one spot ahead of the Bruins at No. 12 in the NFCA/USA Today Top 25 poll, UCSB beat the Bruins in a game earlier this season, and Loyola Marymount lost a closely contested game to the Bruins early in the season.

Hawai’i will play UCSB in the first game of the Los Angeles Regional on Friday at 2:30 p.m., and the Bruins’ first game will come against Loyola Marymount at 5 p.m.

“We played (LMU) and beat them earlier in the year, so there isn’t the unknown,” Inouye-Perez said. “UCSB got us right before we got into Pac-10 and we didn’t play solid softball. We didn’t play our game. If we show up and play our game, good things should happen. ... (Hawai’i) has some girls that can swing for power and two pitchers that have been doing the job. I look forward to seeing what they’re about on Friday.”

If the Bruins end up being the team that survives the double-elimination regional, they would likely have to travel to Knoxville, Tenn., to face a Volunteer team that is currently ranked No. 1 in the nation and has been ranked as the top team for most of the season.

Should Tennessee and UCLA end up meeting, the Bruins would have to take two of three games from a Volunteer team that smoked them 6-1 earlier this season and beat them 4-3 in the World Series last year. The Volunteers boast perhaps the most dominant pitcher in the entire country in senior Monica Abbott, who recently broke former Texas pitcher Cat Osterman’s NCAA record for career strikeouts.

“They can hit the ball, they have speed, and they have arguably the best pitcher in the country,” Inouye-Perez said. “At this point in the year, you want to be able to go against the best of the best. The good news is that we’ve seen them before and we know what they’re about. We have players on this team that have played against Monica Abbott their entire careers. You hope for that opportunity this time of year.”

As a team, the Bruins have made significant strides from the beginning of the regular season. As the postseason begins, they now will find out just how far they’ve actually come.

“I feel great about where we are,” junior outfielder Krista Colburn said. “I feel like we have dealt with every situation possible as a team. We’ve won the close games, we’ve lost the close games, we’ve come from behind. ... We’re really confident going into postseason.”