WEST BABYLON, N.Y. – By one point, St. Thomas Aquinas topped the East Coast Conference Women's Basketball Preseason Poll, as voted on by the league's nine head coaches and announced on Tuesday afternoon. Additionally, St. Thomas Aquinas junior guard Sarah Ericson (Norwich, Conn.) was selected as the league’s Preseason Player of the Year.
Entering the 2023-24 campaign receiving votes in the WBCA NCAA Division II Preseason Top 25 Women’s Basketball Coaches Poll, St. Thomas Aquinas takes the top spot in the poll with four first-place votes and 75 points. STAC has reached the ECC finals five times in program history and the Spartans, who finished as the ECC runner-up a season ago, return the All-ECC First Team standout duo of Ericson (12.5 ppg/9.67 rbg) and Erin Leary (14.0 ppg/7.73 rpg), who finished in the ECC's top six for both scoring and rebounding last year.
ECC Preseason Player of the Year Ericson helped the Spartans earn an at-large bid into the NCAA Championship by stuffing the stat sheet with 12.5 points per game (sixth in the ECC), 9.7 rebounds per game (second in the ECC), 3.3 assists per game (fifth in the ECC), and 1.9 steals per game (fifth in the ECC) last season. The St. Thomas Aquinas junior guard also led the conference with 238 defensive rebounds. Ericson turned in 18 double-digit scoring games, including three 20-plus point games, 14 double-digit rebounding games en route to nine double-doubles.
Defending champion Daemen comes off a season in which the Wildcats won a third ECC Championship in four seasons and played in the program's fourth straight NCAA Division II Tournament, reaching the quartfinals of the East Region Championship. Daemen returns All-ECC Second Team pick Alahna Paige, who ranked fourth in the ECC in assist/turnover (1.22) ratio last season, and Claire Pikett, who swatted away 33 attempts to rank third in the conference in blocked shots.
District of Columbia (59 points), Mercy (55 points), and D'Youville (42 points) took the 3-5 spots.
UDC returns the All-ECC First Team offensive duo of Latavia Jackson (17.04) and Destiny Ryles (16.96), who went 1-2 in scoring for the conference last season, while Mercy returns All-ECC First Team pick Katie Wall (14.04), who finished third in ECC scoring. D'Youville's All-ECC pair of Stella Mollica (2nd Team) and Anna Jankovic (3rd Team) also boasted high conference numbers in 2022-23, as Jankovic led the ECC in rebounding (10.35 rpg) and Mollica led the ECC in assists (5.38 spg) and assist/turnover ratio (1.73).
Queens, Staten Island, Molloy, and Roberts Wesleyan round out the remainder of the poll.
2023-24 ECC Women's Basketball Preseason Poll
| Team |
Pts. |
Last Year's Record |
| 1. St. Thomas Aquinas (4) |
75 |
21-9 (12-4 ECC) |
| 2. Daemen (4) |
74 |
20-5 (13-3 ECC) |
| 3 District of Columbia (1) |
59 |
15-13 (10-6 ECC) |
| 4. Mercy |
55 |
17-10 (11-5 ECC) |
| 5. D'Youville |
42 |
13-14 (8-8 ECC) |
| 6. Queens |
37 |
9-20 (5-11 ECC) |
| 7. Staten Island |
27 |
11-19 (6-10 ECC) |
| 8. Molloy |
19 |
5-20 (4-12 ECC) |
| 9. Roberts Weslean |
17 |
4-19 (3-13 ECC) |
( ) - first place votes
Preseason Player of the Year – Sarah Ericson, St. Thomas Aquinas (Jr., G, Norwich, Conn.)