Women's Basketball News

AGGIES SET TO BATTLE DESALES IN FREEDOM SEMIFINALS
Winner To Play King's/FDU-Florham Victor In Saturday's Championship Game

DOYLESTOWN (PA) - The Delaware Valley College women's basketball team is seeded fourth for the Freedom Conference playoffs and will travel to top-seeded and 24th-ranked DeSales University on Wednesday, February 27 for semifinal action. Tip-off at Billera Hall is set for 6:00 p.m.

The winner of the game will battle the winner of second-seeded King's College and No. 3 FDU-Florham (Wednesday, 6:00 p.m.) in the Freedom Conference Championship Game on Saturday, March 1 (site and time to be determined). The eventual Freedom Conference champion will earn an automatic berth to the NCAA Division III playoffs.

Head coach Laura Hogan and the Aggies finished the regular season 13-12 overall, 7-5 and tied with FDU-Florham for third place in conference play (FDU took the third seed in the tiebreaker). They began the year 4-8, but won nine of their last 13 games and earned their sixth conference playoff berth in the last eight years.

Leading the team all season long has been senior guard Moira Donohue (Philadelphia, PA/Cardinal Dougherty). Donohue is ranked in the top five in the conference in five different categories: 3-pointers (1st - 3.0 avg), scoring (3rd - 17.3 avg), assists (3rd - 3.7 avg), steals (5th - 2.3 avg). Her 74 treys this season are a school record and she also owns the career mark with 187. Donohue is fifth on the Aggies' all-time scoring list with 1,321 points.

Fellow guard Kim Vennera (Norristown, PA/Kennedy-Kenrick) is still bouncing back from an injury that forced her to miss four games in the latter stages of the season. The guard is seventh in the conference in both scoring (13.6 avg) and rebounding (7.0 avg) and is also second in steals with 2.62 average.

Senior center Brooke Dittmar (Langhorne, PA/Neshaminy) is averaging a double-double with 10.4 points and a conference-best 10.4 rebounds per game. She is coming off a career-performance in Saturday's regular-season finale at King's as she notched 25 points and 21 rebounds in a losing effort.

Freshman guard Brittany Battinieri (Eddystone, PA/Ridley) moved into the Aggie starting lineup in the fourth game of the year and has stayed there ever since. She averages 10.8 points and 2.4 assists per game and is fifth in the Freedom Conference with an average of 1.8 treys per game.

Senior Jen McCarthy (Cinnaminson, NJ/St. Basil Academy) rounds out the Delaware Valley starting lineup. The forward averages four points and 3.3 rebounds an outing and is third on the team in steals with 43.

DeSales, under head coach Fred Richter, has made the conference playoffs for 11 straight years since becoming members back in 1997-98. The Lady Bulldogs have been dominant this year as they have won 22 of 25 games (11-1 Freedom), including 11 in a row to end the regular-season. One of the wins in the current streak was an 84-55 triumph over Delaware Valley in Doylestown on February 13. The two teams also met on January 9 with DeSales rallying for a 70-59 home victory.

Junior guard LeighAnn Burke has been the named the conference player of the week on six different occasions this season. She leads all Freedom players in scoring with an average of 19.6 points per game and is also tops in 3-point percentage (.440) and steals (3.0 avg). Her .849 free throw percentage ranks second while her .456 field goal percentage and average of 2.5 treys per game are fourth.

Backcourt mate and fellow junior Kim Rarick averages 14.5 points (fifth in Freedom) and 4.3 assists (second) per contest while shooting 93.6 percent (first) from the foul line and 46 percent (third) from floor.

Forwards Caitlin Miller and Amanda Kuperavage are threats inside for DeSales. Miller averages nine points per game and trails only Dittmar in rebounding with as she averages 9.8 boards an outing. Kuperavage contributes 6.2 points and five rebounds per contest.