Cutting down the nets at the end of the Final Four is special enough — months of hard work ending in a national championship. But some teams accomplish even more by completing undefeated seasons.
Since the first NCAA women’s basketball tournament in 1982, the sport has seen its fair share of perfect seasons. Twenty teams have even entered the tournament undefeated, with half of them ending up winning the national championship.
First, some stats on these 21 teams that entered the NCAA tournament undefeated:
10 won the national championship
Of these 21 teams, 10 have been UConn; six of those 10 UConn teams won the title
1998 was the first time two teams entered the tournament unbeaten. It happened again in 2014
In that 2014 tournament, UConn and Notre Dame ended up playing each other for the national championship
These 21 teams have a tournament record of 87-11, including 79-8 since the bracket expanded to 64 teams in 1994
Three programs are on here more than once: UConn, South Carolina…and Vermont
Here’s the full table of these regular season unbeatens.
TEAM
RECORD
(pre-tournament)
Tournament
record
Finish
1986 Texas
29-0
5-0
National champion
1990 Louisiana Tech
29-0
3-1
Final Four
1992 Vermont
29-0
0-1
First Round
1993 Vermont
28-0
0-1
First Round
1995 UConn
29-0
6-0
National champion
1997 UConn
30-0
3-1
Elite Eight
1998 Tennessee
33-0
6-0
National champion
1998 Liberty
28-0
0-1
First Round
2002 UConn
33-0
6-0
National champion
2009 UConn
33-0
6-0
National champion
2010 UConn
33-0
6-0
National champion
2012 Baylor
34-0
6-0
National champion
2014 UConn
34-0
6-0
National champion
2014 Notre Dame
32-0
5-1
National runner-up
2015 Princeton
30-0
1-1
Second Round
2016 UConn
32-0
6-0
National champion
2017 UConn
32-0
4-1
Final Four
2018 UConn
32-0
4-1
Final Four
2023 South Carolina
32-0
4-1
Final Four
2024 South Carolina
32-0
6-0
National champion
2026 UConn
34-0
4-1
Final Four
Interestingly, in the two instances where there were multiple undefeated teams, they’ve ended up facing off both times in March Madness.
BETTER THAN THE REST: Schools with the most NCAA women’s basketball titles
In 1998, undefeated teams played each other in the NCAA tournament for the first time — men or women — as SEC champ Tennessee met Big South champ Liberty in the first round in a No. 1 vs. No. 16 game. Though Liberty led early, the Lady Vols soon took over, winning in a 102-58 rout.
That same year, however, there was a 16-over-1 upset in the bracket, as Harvard stunned Stanford 71-67 for the first-ever 16-over-1 win in NCAA tournament history.
In the other year of the head-to-head game between perfect squads, UConn and Notre Dame started the 2014 NCAA tournament on opposite sides of the bracket. The Huskies and Irish made the dream meeting happen, as UConn beat Notre Dame 79-58 in the undefeated vs. undefeated national championship game.
However, three of these 21 teams left March Madness without winning a tournament game. That Liberty team is joined by the two Vermont entries. Both Vermont campaigns came before expansion, as the Catamounts were seeded No. 9 and No. 8, losing to George Washington and Rutgers in the first round. That Vermont run marked the first time a program completed consecutive undefeated regular seasons.
There was also a five-year run of an undefeated entry starting with that 2014 UConn-Notre Dame double, followed by Princeton (2015) and UConn (2016-18). Of these six teams in five years, all received a No. 1 seed except Princeton. The Ivy League champion Tigers climbed into the top 15 of the AP Top 25 rankings and received a No. 8 seed, which is the highest seed in conference history. Princeton did beat No. 9 Green Bay in the first round — just the Ivy’s second-ever NCAA tournament win after that 1998 Harvard upset — before falling to No. 1 Maryland in the second round. President Barack Obama watched the Tigers in their March Madness run, as his niece Leslie Robinson was a freshman on the team. First Lady Michelle Obama also graduated from Princeton.