AMHERST, N.Y. -- The Daemen University women's basketball team moves up to sixth in the East Region in the
third NCAA Division II Regional Rankings, released on Wednesday afternoon. It marks the third and final of three polls that will be released by the Regional Advisory Committee. The NCAA announces 10-team rankings for each of the eight regions across the country for three successive weeks leading up to the NCAA Championship selection announcement, which will be made this year on Sunday, March 10.
Assumption (24-4), Bentley (24-5), Saint Rose (21-6), Franklin Pierce (20-9) and Thomas Jefferson (27-1) are the top five teams in the region, while Daemen (18-7), Southern New Hampshire (17-10), Mercy (19-8), Southern Connecticut State (18-12) and Pace (18-12) round out the top 10.
Daemen won their fifth consecutive East Coast Conference regular season title on Saturday, topping Roberts Wesleyan 64-59 to finish off the regular season with an 18-7 overall record and 13-3 record in ECC play. The Wildcats will host the ECC Semifinals and Championship game at Lumsden Gymnasium this upcoming weekend, March 9-10. The Wildcats rank second in the ECC defensively, allowing 58.3 points per game and rank second in the conference offensively by scoring an average of 64.9 points per game. The Wildcats are led offensively by the ECC's leading scorer in senior guard
Alahna Paige, who is averaging 21.7 ppg, the third-most in NCAA Division II women's basketball. Paige broke the 10-year Daemen program record for single-season three point field goals, and became the 28th player in Daemen women's basketball history to record 1,000 points. She leads the league in three-point percentage (41%), and ranks second in the nation with 3.5 triples per game.
The Wildcats are ranked eighth in the East Region in the latest Division II College Sports Communicators (D2CSC) regional rankings, and have been ranked regionally by the D2CSC for the majority of the season.
Daemen University features the premier NCAA Division II athletics program in the Buffalo-Niagara region, sponsoring 17 intercollegiate teams. For the latest information on Daemen Athletics, follow the Wildcats via social media on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, or sign up to receive customizable news alerts, e-mail newsletters and weekly schedule alerts.
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