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The Ohio State women’s basketball team is heading into the 2018-19 season with a ton of unknowns as they return just 6.5 points per game from their back-to-back Big Ten Championship winning teams. However, on Saturday, they got a big boost for the following season, as the nation’s fifth-rated player in the 2019 recruiting class, Kierstan Bell, announced her commitment to play for the Buckeyes on Twitter Saturday afternoon.
— (@Dotmug_330) August 25, 2018
The 6-foot-1 guard is entering her senior season at Canton McKinley High School and averaged 33.3 points, 9.6 rebounds, and five steals per game during her junior season, which earned her the second of two-consecutive Ohio Ms. Basketball titles. ESPN’s HoopGurlz recruiting rankings lists Bell as a five-star player, and the top prospect in the stacked state of Ohio.
OSU head coach Kevin McGuff has been working hard on the recruiting trail to replace the talent lost following last season. Bell is the third player in the top-60 to commit to the 2019 class, joining fellow guards Rikki Harris from North Central HS (IN), and Jacy Sheldon of Dublin Coffman.
McGuff is also hoping to land two other top-10 players from the state of Ohio in Columbus Afrocentric guard Jordan Horston and Toledo Rogers HS guard Zia Cooke, the eighth and 10th ranked players nationally according to ESPN.
Bell is the highest rated recruit to commit to play for the OSU women’s basketball team since Kelsey Mitchell, now of the WNBA’s Indiana Fever.
Check out Bell’s highlights below.