The Eastern women’s basketball team is right where it was last season at this time – picked to finish sixth in the Ohio Valley Conference’s preseason poll.

The Panthers were selected to this position by coaches and league sports information directors at the OVC’s media day Tuesday in Nashville, Tenn.

Southeast Missouri (10 first-place votes, 188 points) edged out last year’s conference champions Austin Peay (nine first-place votes, 182 points) by six points to earn the top spot in the poll.

Next was Eastern Kentucky with 167 points, followed by Tennessee Tech (147) and Morehead State (106). Eastern received 100 points, two ahead of Tennessee-Martin. Jacksonville State (80), Murray State (58), Tennessee State (45) and Samford (39) rounded out the poll.

Eastern returns four starters including senior guard Lauren Dailey who was picked to Second Team Preseason All-OVC. Eastern will also see the return of junior center Pam O’Connor who sat out last season with a knee injury.

The other two returning starters are sophomore guard Megan Sparks and senior forward Katie Meyers.

Sparks was second on the team in scoring (11.3 ppg) last season, earning OVC-All Freshman honors while Meyers finished tied with a team lead 24 blocks in 21 games.

Eastern coach Linda Wunder said she is looking for a little more consistency from her players this year.

“Well, we definitely feel like we’ve got a lot of experience coming back for the first time in quite awhile,” Wunder said. “The big addition of having Pam O’Connor back and healthy – that gives us a huge presence inside.”