Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – The Regis Rangers are the 2023-24 Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Women’s Basketball Preseason favorites, the league announced Wednesday. The RMAC Women’s Basketball preseason coaches’ poll is voted on by the league’s 15 coaches. Head coaches are not permitted to vote for their program.
 
The Rangers enter the season as the preseason frontrunners after garnering 12 first-place votes and 192 total points. Regis swept the RMAC regular-season and tournament championships last year and looks to charge back to the top with reigning RMAC Player of the Year and RMAC Tournament's most valuable player, Erin Fry, leading the way. Josey Ryan and Sam Deem also return for the stout Regis squad, completing an offensive trio that averaged 40.7 points per game last season for a team that reached the NCAA Division II South Central Regional Championship.  
 
Colorado School of Mines checks in at second place with 168 points and one first-place vote. The Orediggers reached the 2022-23 RMAC Tournament Championship, but aim to surpass that finish behind Ashley Steffeck, who returns to captain the Orediggers. Graduate student Shelby Nichols will also play a role in Mines’ success this season after contributing four rebounds per game last season.
 
Colorado State University Pueblo received the league’s final two first-place votes to grab the third-place spot in preseason voting with 165 points. The Pack added seven new faces to its program ahead of this season but will lean on junior Landri Hudson for veteran leadership.
 
Adams State checked in at fourth place with 164 points, while Black Hills State rounded out the top five with 143 points. Colorado Mesa grabbed 136 points for sixth place, just ahead of Metropolitan State University of Denver in seventh place with 125 points.
 
The middle of the pack was separated by only 15 points with Fort Lewis earning eighth place with 81 points, University of Colorado Colorado Springs in ninth place with 75 points and Colorado Christian in 10th place with 73 points.
 
New Mexico Highlands collected 66 points for 11th place, followed by Westminster in 12th place with 59 points. Western Colorado (56 points), South Dakota Mines (39 points) and Chadron State (33 points) round out the league’s preseason voting.
 
The RMAC women’s basketball season gets started the first two weekends of November, as all 15 members see action in those two weeks. The regular season concludes on March 2, 2024, with the RMAC Women’s Basketball Tournament to follow. All RMAC-hosted home games can be seen on the RMAC Network.