Women's Basketball projected to finish third in 2018-19 OAC Coaches Poll

By Blake Moore

| OAC Coaches Poll (.pdf) |

ADA — The Ohio Northern women's basketball program was picked to finish third among the Ohio Athletic Conference during the 2018-19 season in the annual OAC Women's Basketball Coaches Poll released Wednesday.

The Polar Bears, under the direction of 18th-year head coach Michele Durand, received 59 points in the poll after claiming their fourth consecutive OAC Regular Season title in the 2017-18 campaign.

The league's 10 head coaches tabbed Baldwin Wallace as the favorite, awarding the Yellow Jackets 74 points and four first-place votes. Capital would finish second in the poll with 67 points and one first-place vote. Marietta, Mount Union, and John Carroll also received first-place votes and finished fourth-through-sixth, respectively.

Coach Durand and her staff welcome back nine previous letter-winners and two starters from a 2017-18 squad that went 23-5 overall and 15-3 in the Ohio Athletic Conference. Northern would rank as high as No. 7 in the D3Hoops.com national polls and conclude their season with a trip to the OAC Tournament finals where they fell to Marietta.

The Polar Bears are scheduled to appear in the Allegheny (Pa.) Tip-Off Tournament on Friday, November 16 and Saturday, November 17 to kick off the 2018-19 regular season. ONU is slated to face Chatham (Pa.) on Friday and battle their weekend host Allegheny (Pa.) on Saturday with similar 1 p.m. start times.

2018-19 OAC Women's Basketball Coaches Poll