By The Canadian Press

VICTORIA, B.C. - The No. 5 Alberta Pandas earned a pair of upset wins at the CIS women's field hockey championships Saturday and advanced to the gold-medal game.

After opening the tournament with a pair of losses Friday, the Pandas beat the defending national champion and tournament host Victoria Vikes 2-1 Saturday, then followed that result with a 2-1 win over the No. 1 seed Guelph Gryphons. The Pandas (2-2) came back from 1-0 deficits in both games.

The Pandas will face the No. 2 UBC Thunderbirds in Sunday's final. UBC beat the University of Toronto 4-1 Saturday and took first place in the round-robin with a 3-0-1 record and 10 points.

The Pandas, who lost 2-1 to Victoria in last year's final, will make their fourth appearance in the title match.

The Thunderbirds, who share the record of 11 McCrae Cup titles with Victoria, will play for CIS gold for the 17th time since the inaugural championship in 1975, and the first time since 2006.

Victoria (1-1-2) and Guelph (1-2-1) finished third and fourth in the round-robin standings and will battle for bronze Sunday at 10 a.m. Toronto (1-3-0) placed fifth for the second straight year.

"We had a slow start the last two days and we rose to the challenge, we're definitely peaking at the right time," said Alberta interim head coach A.J. Facendi.

CIS player of the year Brienne Stairs gave Guelph the early lead in the preliminaries finale, scoring in the fifth minute of play.

Bunny Hughes tied the game for the Pandas in the 32nd minute and freshman Dana Morch scored the winner at the at the 45-minute mark of the second half.

UBC 4 Toronto 1

The Thunderbirds scored three goals in the first half to down the Varsity Blues.

Defender Samantha Smith of Vancouver opening the scoring in the fourth minute of play and Kira Graham and Poonam Sandhu adding two goals in a span of two minutes in the later stages of the period.

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Alberta 2 Victoria 1

Jackie Trautman and Bunny Hughes scored in Alberta's comeback win over Victoria.

Natalie Wise opened the scoring for the Vikes.