The Boston University women’s basketball team is slated for a fourth-place finish in America East this season, according to the conference’s preseason poll released yesterday.

With the graduation of Erica Kovach and Katie Meinhardt (combined 22.4 points per game last season), senior guard Cheri Raffo and sophomore forward Aly Hinton will be called on to supply the offense for a BU team (15-15, 7-9 America East last season) that bowed out in the quarterfinal round of the 2007 conference tournament.

Hinton, Raffo and junior guards Kristi Dini and Christine Kinneary comprise an experienced returning core, as each player appeared in all 30 games last winter.

Raffo matched Kovach in scoring average (9.3) in 2006-07 and was closely followed by Hinton (8.8), a unanimous All-Rookie Team selection who notched the sixth-best rebounding average in the conference last year.

The two-time defending regular season champion University of Hartford (64 points) nabbed the No. 1 slot, followed by the University of Vermont (56), Binghamton University (45) and BU (43).

The Terriers, who open play Saturday at Siena College, placed ahead of Stony Brook University (32), University of Maryland-Baltimore County (28), the University of Maine (25), the University at Albany (16) and the University of New Hampshire (15).