Less than a week after giving Southern California its toughest fight this season, Stanford women’s varsity eight crew learned it’ll have the chance to take on the top-ranked team once more at the NCAA Championships, May 25-27.

The No. 18 Cardinal received an at-large bid to the NCAAs on Wednesday after coming within just 3.5 seconds of USC at the Pacific-10 Conference Championships this past weekend. Stanford narrowly surpassed No. 8 California in the Pac-10 final, after both teams outpaced No. 10 UCLA to race for second.

UCLA and the defending national champion Golden Bears also qualified for the NCAA Championships, to be held in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Additional qualifiers were Brown, Central Florida, Dartmouth, Harvard, Minnesota, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Princeton, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington.