Women’s Basketball Tri-Champs Crowned; DePauw Top Tourney Seed

CLEVELAND, OH -- DePauw, Ohio Wesleyan and Wittenberg earned a share of the 2023-24 North Coast Athletic Conference women’s basketball title after posting identical 11-3 NCAC records, marking the first time that the NCAC has had tri-champions in the sport. Wittenberg leads league women’s basketball squads with 14 titles all-time, while DePauw captured its 11th title in the last 12 seasons of conference competition. Ohio Wesleyan and Allegheny are behind both Tiger teams with six NCAC titles apiece; Denison owns four championships, followed by Kenyon (3) and Wooster (2).
 
DePauw will be the top seed in the 2024 NCAC Women's Basketball Tournament, which begins with quarterfinal games on campus sites on Tuesday evening. Tournament seeding follows the final regular-season standings with the top four seeds hosting quarterfinal contests. The three-way tie between DePauw (11-3), Ohio Wesleyan (11-3) and Wittenberg (11-3) for first and the two-way tie between Kenyon (1-13) and Wooster (1-13) for seventh were broken via the conference tiebreaker system for seeding purposes only.

Quarterfinal games will be played on Tuesday, Feb. 20, with top-seeded DePauw hosting eighth-seeded Wooster at 6:00 p.m. and second-seeded Wittenberg hosting seventh-seeded Kenyon at 8:00 p.m. In the other quarterfinal games, third-seeded Ohio Wesleyan will play host to sixth-seeded Hiram (4-10) at 7:00 p.m. and fourth-seeded Denison (10-4) entertains fifth-seeded Oberlin (7-7) at 7:30 p.m. The quarterfinal games at Wittenberg and Denison will be part of a doubleheader with the men, who will play prior to the women’s contests. The gym will be cleared in between those games and separate tickets will be required for both contests.

Tuesday's winners will advance to the semifinals and tournament final on Friday, Feb. 23, and Saturday, Feb. 24, at the site of the highest remaining seed to emerge from the quarterfinal round. Semifinal games will be held on Friday with the host institution selecting its preferred time. The tourney final is set for 4:00 p.m. on Saturday. 

If one institution hosts both the men's and women's "final four," the women's semifinals will be played on Thursday, Feb. 22, and the men's semifinals will be played on Friday, Feb. 23. The championship games would then be played on Saturday with the women playing at 3:00 p.m. and the men at 7:00 p.m. In this scenario, the gym will be cleared in between games and separate tickets will be required for each contest.

This year's tournament champion will receive an automatic bid to the 2024 NCAA Division III Women's Basketball Tournament, which begins with first-round play on March 1st.

TOURNEY TALK: Ohio Wesleyan is the defending NCAC Tournament champion after earning a 79-71 victory over Oberlin in the 2023 tournament final to claim the Battling Bishops’ sixth tourney crown. OWU along with Wittenberg (9), DePauw (7), Denison (7), and Allegheny (5) have combined to win 34-of-38 women's tournament titles, while Kenyon (2), Oberlin (1) and Wooster (1) account for the four other tourney trophies ... Top-seeded DePauw enters its 12th NCAC Tournament carrying a 25-4 record in tournament action and the league's highest winning percentage at .862, while Wittenberg is second in tournament play with a .688 winning percentage (53-24). Ohio Wesleyan has gone 51-31 in the tournament (.622) and Denison owns a 41-30 record in tournament action (.577) … Second-seeded Wittenberg leads all conference teams with 17 appearances in the championship game, while Ohio Wesleyan is close behind with 16, Denison has 13 and DePauw has seven, followed by Kenyon (6), Wooster (4) and Oberlin (2) … Third-seeded Ohio Wesleyan and fourth-seeded Denison, which last won the tourney title in 2011, have both qualified for the tournament 38 out of the 39 competitive seasons, every year it has been contested (with one season cancelled due to Covid 19) … Oberlin, which won the tourney title as a three seed in 2018 and was the runner-up last season as the No. 4 seed, enters the tournament in the No. 5 spot … Sixth-seeded Hiram enters the NCAC Tournament for the 10th-consecutive season and will look to advance past the quarterfinal round for the first time in program history … Seventh-seeded Kenyon looks to advance to the semifinals for the 25th season after falling in the quarterfinal round in 2023 ... Wooster enters the tourney as the No. 8 seed and will look to capture the team’s 14th win in tournament play.

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