Defending champion UConn, now without Paige Bueckers, 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.
Sports Roundup
“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.”
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 supremacy: 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.
AP preseason women’s poll
1. UConn (27)
2. South Carolina (4)
3. UCLA
4. Texas
5. LSU
6. Oklahoma
7. Duke
8. Tennessee
9. NC State
10. Maryland
11. North Carolina
12. Mississippi
13. Michigan
14. Iowa State
15. Notre Dame
16. Baylor
17. TCU
18. Southern Cal
19. Vanderbilt
20. Louisville
21. Iowa
22. Oklahoma State
23. Michigan State
T-24. Kentucky
T-24. Richmond
Others receiving votes: Washington 79, Ohio State 46, West Virginia 17, Princeton 17, Minnesota 15, Kansas State 15, Kansas 7, Stanford 3, South Dakota St. 3, Illinois 2, Nebraska 2, Columbia 2.
Find more college sports coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.