Complete D3hoops.com Week 13 National Rankings
MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. – The Baldwin Wallace University women's basketball team have climbed to the No. 9 spot in D3hoops.com's 13th weekly installment of its national poll.
BW appears in the top-25 rankings for the 13th consecutive week with a season-high 419 vote points; a 104-vote point increase from last week's No. 10 ranking. The Yellow Jackets are the sole Ohio Athletic Conference representative to appear in this week's top-25 national rankings, with crosstown rival John Carroll University having just received votes. BW also claims its highest national ranking in approximately 13 years, since garnering the No. 6 position in the 2006-07 Week 6 poll on January 7, 2007.
The Yellow Jackets one-spot jump in the national poll comes following a week where BW captured its first OAC Tournament Championship since 2015 with three straight postseason victories. With the title, the Yellow Jackets punched their ticket to the NCAA Tournament for the second straight year, via automatic bid. BW defeated eighth-seeded Otterbein University in Tuesday's quarterfinals matchup by a final score of 87-59, then beat fourth-seeded Marietta College in Thursday's semifinals tilt by a final score of 72-41, and capped off their championship run with a big win against No. 25 nationally-ranked (at the time) and second-seeded crosstown rival John Carroll in the championship game by a final score of 80-63. In addition to the Yellow Jackets' convincing 25.3-point margin of victory in the OAC Tournament, their upward transition in this week's poll can also be credited to a current season-long 12-game win streak, and a perfect 15-0 record on its home floor. This season marks the first year that the Yellow Jackets have swept both the OAC regular season and tournament titles since the 2007-08 season.
BW returns to the court on Friday, March 6 when they host 2019-20 Centennial Conference Tournament champions Haverford (Pa.) College in the NCAA Division III Women's Basketball Tournament first round at 7:00 p.m. in Ursprung Gymnasium.