last season\u2019s runners-up to UConn<\/a>, were picked second in the poll and garnered the other four first-place votes. It\u2019s the fifth time in the last six years that Dawn Staley\u2019s Gamecocks were picked in the top five of the preseason poll. UCLA and Texas were third and fourth and LSU were fifth.<\/p>\nOklahoma were sixth, the Sooners\u2019 highest preseason ranking since they were fourth in 2008. Duke, Tennessee, NC State and Maryland rounded out the top 10.<\/p>\n
Led by sensational sophomore Sarah Strong and super senior Azzi Fudd, Geno Auriemma\u2019s UConn squad is ranked No 1 in the preseason for the 13th time since 1995 and first since 2017.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully it\u2019s a little bit of a confidence builder and not, \u2018Oh my God!\u2019\u201d Auriemma said. \u201cI\u2019m happy for them. We talk a lot about how we\u2019re not out here to prove that we\u2019re defending national champions or we\u2019re preseason number one in the country, and we have to beat everybody by 40. We don\u2019t want to get caught in that trap. You tend to finish the year where you\u2019re predicted. So I like being in this position.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eight of the 12 previous times UConn were picked first, the Huskies won the national championship. Auriemma thinks his team has a good shot this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s got to come with great leadership and it\u2019s got to come with a little bit of luck and people rising to the occasion,\u201d he said. \u201cThose four times that we didn\u2019t win, we didn\u2019t get lucky or we didn\u2019t stay healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The top four teams were picked in the same order as last season\u2019s final poll. It\u2019s the first time in the 50-year history of the women\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Michigan are ranked No 13 in the preseason poll, their 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.<\/p>\n
No 19 Vanderbilt, led by sophomore Mikayla Blakes, are 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\u2019s team was ranked last year for the first time since 2014 when they entered the poll for two weeks.<\/p>\n
No 24 Richmond have their 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).<\/p>\n
Richmond returnssenior standouts Maggie Doogan and Rachel Ullstrom from last season\u2019s team that went 28-7. The Spiders also added transfer Tierra Simon from Saint Louis.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt says a lot about where the program is right now,\u201d Richmond coach Aaron Roussell said. \u201cI don\u2019t think it was ever a goal, we just wanted to keep putting this program on the map. We talk about that a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defending champion UConn picked up where they left off as the No 1 team in the country in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-214374","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}