Tigers host NCAC tournament today; softball picked for first

Top-seeded DePauw University will host the North Coast Athletic Conference women’s basketball tournament today and Saturday, as the Tigers seek to make their 14th straight NCAA tournament appearance.

The Tigers (24-2 and ranked No. 12 nationally by D3hoops.com) defeated Wooster 90-56 in the quarterfinals on Tuesday, and will meet Oberlin at 5 p.m. today in the semifinals. Oberlin (the tourney’s fifth seed) was a 60-43 winner over fourth-seeded Hiram on Tuesday.

Second-seeded Kenyon, a 61-46 winner over Wittenberg on Tuesday, meets No. 6 seed Denison at 7 p.m. today. Denison upset third-seeded Ohio Wesleyan 61-46 in the semifinal round.

Tonight’s winners will meet at 4 p.m. on Saturday to determine the NCAC champ and winner of the league’s automatic berth.

DePauw is the defending NCAC tournament champion after defeating Allegheny 83-53 in the 2016 tournament final. The Tigers won 60-41 at Oberlin (13-13) last Saturday.

Softball

• Tigers picked first — North Coast Athletic Conference softball coaches have selected DePauw as the preseason favorite based on balloting in the annual preseason coaches’ poll.

The Tigers, who claimed their fourth-straight conference championship in 2016, were selected to finish first in the poll after collecting seven first-place votes and 78 total points. Wittenberg, which claimed its second NCAC Tournament title a season ago and won 20-plus games for the fifth-straight season, garnered the final two first-place votes to finish second in the poll with 71 points.

Denison, which leads the NCAC with eight league titles and is looking for its first since 2011, finished third with 66 points followed by Ohio Wesleyan in fourth (48) and Wooster rounding out the top five with 43 points.

Kenyon was predicted to finish sixth with 36 points and Allegheny checked in at seventh with 35 points. Oberlin and Hiram rounded out the poll by tying for eighth with 14 points each. 

DePauw, which won 30-plus games for the second-straight season, enters 2017 with four returning players that garnered All-NCAC first-team honors last year, highlighted by the junior duo of designated player Lauren Godden of Carmel and pitcher Emma Baldwin of Oak Park, Ill.

Godden, who was also named NCAC Player of the Year last season, finished 2016 as the conference leader in several different categories, including hits (62), home runs (10), RBI (43) and total bases (102).

In the circle, Baldwin returns after leading the NCAC in strikeouts (166) despite being fourth in innings pitched (134.1) in 2016.

Baldwin won 14 games with a 2.14 earned-run-average and also led the league with five saves on the year.

Leading DePauw in 2017 will be Erica Hanrahan, who enters her fifth year as head coach with a 116-71 record, four NCAC titles, two tournament titles and was named the NCAC Coach of the Year in 2016 for the second-time in her career.