Defending champion UConn picked up where it left off as the No. 1 team in the country in The Associated Press Top 25 preseason women’s basketball poll released Tuesday.
The Huskies received 27 first-place votes from a 31-member national media panel. South Carolina, last season’s runner-up to UConn, was picked second in the poll and garnered the other four first-place votes. It’s the fifth time in the last six years that Dawn Staley’s Gamecocks were picked in the top five of the preseason poll. UCLA and Texas were third and fourth and LSU was fifth.
Oklahoma was sixth, the Sooners’ highest preseason ranking since they were fourth in 2008. Duke, Tennessee, N.C. State and Maryland rounded out the top 10.
Led by sensational sophomore Sarah Strong and super senior Azzi Fudd, Geno Auriemma’s UConn squad is ranked No. 1 in the preseason for the 13th time since 1995 and first since 2017.
“Hopefully it’s a little bit of a confidence builder and not, ‘Oh my God!’” Auriemma said. “I’m happy for them. We talk a lot about how we’re not out here to prove that we’re defending national champions or we’re preseason number one in the country, and we have to beat everybody by 40. We don’t want to get caught in that trap. You tend to finish the year where you’re predicted. So I like being in this position.”
Eight of the 12 previous times UConn was picked first, the Huskies won the national championship. Auriemma thinks his team has a good shot this year.
“It’s got to come with great leadership and it’s got to come with a little bit of luck and people rising to the occasion,” he said. “Those four times that we didn’t win, we didn’t get lucky or we didn’t stay healthy.”
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The top four teams were picked in the same order as last season’s final poll. It’s the first time in the 50-year history of the women’s poll that the top four teams in the final poll were the same in the preseason Top 25 the next year; last year was only the second season that the AP released a Top 25 after the championship game. For more than four decades, the final poll was released before the start of the NCAA Tournament.
Conference supremecy
The Southeastern Conference has eight teams in the Top 25, including five in the top 10. The Big Ten is next with six schools in the poll. The ACC has five and Big 12 four. The Atlantic-10 and Big East each have one.
High expectations in Ann Arbor
Michigan is ranked No. 13 in the preseason poll, its highest ranking in the inaugural poll since 2021 (No. 11). The Wolverines started three freshmen last year and went 23-11, winning an NCAA Tournament game. Big things are expected from that trio of Syla Swords, Mila Holloway and Olivia Olson.
Resurgent ’Dores
No. 19 Vanderbilt, led by sophomore Mikayla Blakes, is ranked in the preseason for the first time since 2012. Blakes had one of the finest freshman seasons in school history when she averaged 23.3 points and scoring over 50 twice. Coach Shea Ralph’s team was ranked last year for the first time since 2014 when they entered the poll for two weeks.
No. 24 Richmond has its first ranking in school history. Expectations are high for the Spiders, who won their first NCAA Tournament game last season. The Spiders are the first team from the Atlantic-10 to earn a Top 25 ranking in a decade (George Washington, 2015).
Richmond returns senior standouts Maggie Doogan and Rachel Ullstrom from last season’s team that went 28-7. The Spiders also added transfer Tierra Simon from Saint Louis.
“It says a lot about where the program is right now,” Richmond coach Aaron Roussell said. “I don’t think it was ever a goal, we just wanted to keep putting this program on the map. We talk about that a lot.”
Reporting by The Associated Press.
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