{"id":583997,"date":"2026-04-04T01:24:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T01:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/583997\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T01:24:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T01:24:12","slug":"how-undefeated-teams-do-in-the-ncaa-womens-basketball-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/583997\/","title":{"rendered":"How undefeated teams do in the NCAA women’s basketball tournament"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cutting down the nets at the end of the Final Four is special enough \u2014 months of hard work ending in a national championship. But some teams accomplish even more by completing undefeated seasons.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

First, some stats on these 21 teams that entered the NCAA tournament undefeated:<\/p>\n

\t10 won the national championship
\n\tOf these 21\u00a0teams, 10 have been UConn; six of those 10 UConn teams won the title
\n\t1998 was the first time two teams entered the tournament unbeaten. It happened again in 2014
\n\tIn that 2014 tournament, UConn and Notre Dame ended up playing each other for the national championship
\n\tThese 21\u00a0teams have a tournament record of 87-11, including 79-8\u00a0since the bracket\u00a0expanded to 64 teams in 1994
\n\tThree programs are on here more than once: UConn, South Carolina…and\u00a0Vermont<\/p>\n

Here’s the full table of these regular season unbeatens.<\/p>\n

\t\t\tTEAM
\n\t\t\tRECORD
(pre-tournament)
\n\t\t\tTournament
record
\n\t\t\tFinish<\/p>\n

\t\t\t1986 Texas
\n\t\t\t29-0
\n\t\t\t5-0
\n\t\t\tNational champion<\/p>\n

\t\t\t1990 Louisiana Tech
\n\t\t\t29-0
\n\t\t\t3-1
\n\t\t\tFinal Four<\/p>\n

\t\t\t1992 Vermont
\n\t\t\t29-0
\n\t\t\t0-1
\n\t\t\tFirst Round<\/p>\n

\t\t\t1993 Vermont
\n\t\t\t28-0
\n\t\t\t0-1
\n\t\t\tFirst Round<\/p>\n

\t\t\t1995 UConn
\n\t\t\t29-0
\n\t\t\t6-0
\n\t\t\tNational champion<\/p>\n

\t\t\t1997 UConn
\n\t\t\t30-0
\n\t\t\t3-1
\n\t\t\tElite Eight<\/p>\n

\t\t\t1998 Tennessee
\n\t\t\t33-0
\n\t\t\t6-0
\n\t\t\tNational champion<\/p>\n

\t\t\t1998 Liberty
\n\t\t\t28-0
\n\t\t\t0-1
\n\t\t\tFirst Round<\/p>\n

\t\t\t2002 UConn
\n\t\t\t33-0
\n\t\t\t6-0
\n\t\t\tNational champion<\/p>\n

\t\t\t2009 UConn
\n\t\t\t33-0
\n\t\t\t6-0
\n\t\t\tNational champion<\/p>\n

\t\t\t2010 UConn
\n\t\t\t33-0
\n\t\t\t6-0
\n\t\t\tNational champion<\/p>\n

\t\t\t2012 Baylor
\n\t\t\t34-0
\n\t\t\t6-0
\n\t\t\tNational champion<\/p>\n

\t\t\t2014 UConn
\n\t\t\t34-0
\n\t\t\t6-0
\n\t\t\tNational champion<\/p>\n

\t\t\t2014 Notre Dame
\n\t\t\t32-0
\n\t\t\t5-1
\n\t\t\tNational runner-up<\/p>\n

\t\t\t2015 Princeton
\n\t\t\t30-0
\n\t\t\t1-1
\n\t\t\tSecond Round<\/p>\n

\t\t\t2016 UConn
\n\t\t\t32-0
\n\t\t\t6-0
\n\t\t\tNational champion<\/p>\n

\t\t\t2017 UConn
\n\t\t\t32-0
\n\t\t\t4-1
\n\t\t\tFinal Four<\/p>\n

\t\t\t2018 UConn
\n\t\t\t32-0
\n\t\t\t4-1
\n\t\t\tFinal Four<\/p>\n

\t\t\t2023 South Carolina
\n\t\t\t32-0
\n\t\t\t4-1
\n\t\t\tFinal Four<\/p>\n

\t\t\t2024 South Carolina
\n\t\t\t32-0
\n\t\t\t6-0
\n\t\t\tNational champion<\/p>\n

\t\t\t2026 UConn
\n\t\t\t34-0
\n\t\t\t4-1
\n\t\t\tFinal Four<\/p>\n

Interestingly, in the two instances where there were multiple undefeated teams, they’ve ended up facing off both times in March Madness.<\/p>\n

BETTER THAN THE REST: Schools with the most NCAA women’s basketball titles<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1998, undefeated teams played each other in the NCAA tournament for the first time \u2014 men or women \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 just the Ivy’s second-ever NCAA tournament win after that 1998 Harvard upset \u2014 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cutting down the nets at the end of the Final Four is special enough \u2014 months of hard…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-583997","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\/583997","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=583997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}