COLUMBIA, Mo. – Mizzou Women’s Basketball earned its first preseason top-25 ranking of the 2018-19 season as Lindy’s Sports ranked Mizzou No. 12 in its Preseason Women’s Basketball Top-25 poll. In addition to the top-15 team ranking, senior Sophie Cunningham (Columbia, Mo.) was selected to the Preseason Second-Team All-America list.

In 2017-18, Mizzou earned a third consecutive NCAA Tournament berth for the first time since 1984-86. Head Coach Robin Pingeton’s squad won 24 games for the first time since 1983-84 and earned a No. 5 seed in the Big Dance, its highest seed in program history since the tournament moved to 64 teams.

Mizzou returns three of its five starters from last year’s team, including Cunningham, who has earned an All-SEC First-Team selection each of the past two seasons. Cunningham averaged 18.5 points and 4.7 rebounds per game in her junior campaign, and was the only player in the nation to shoot better than 54 percent from the field (54.2 percent, 186-for-343), 45 percent from three (45.7 percent, 69-for-151) and 83 percent from the free throw line (83.6 percent, 133-for-159).

Also returning for Mizzou is redshirt senior Lauren Aldridge (Marshfield, Mo.) and junior Amber Smith (Shreveport, La.), who each started all 32 games for the Tigers last season. In her first season with the Black & Gold, Aldridge set a new single-season program record in assist-to-turnover ratio at 2.2 while leading the team in assists with 113 and scoring 6.7 points per game. Smith, the 2017 SEC Freshman of the Year, made a significant jump in production from her freshman to sophomore campaign, improving from 5.9 points and 2.8 rebounds in 2016-17 to 9.3 points and 5.3 rebounds per game in 2017-18.

— Mizzou Athletics —