UConn is No. 1 in women’s preseason AP Top 25

Defending champion UConn picked up where it left off as the nation’s No. 1 team in The Associated Press Top 25 A preseason women’s basketball poll was released Tuesday.

The Huskies received 27 first-place votes from a 31-member national media panel. South Carolina, last season’s runner-up behind UConn, was picked second in the poll and collected the other four first-place votes. This is the fifth time in the last six years that Dawn Staley’s Gamecocks have been selected in the top five of the preseason poll. UCLA and Texas were third and fourth and LSU was fifth.

Oklahoma finished sixth, the Sooners’ highest preseason ranking since they were fourth in 2008. Duke, Tennessee, NC State and Maryland rounded out the top 10.

Led by sensational sophomore Sarah Strong and super senior Azzi Fudd, Geno Auriemma’s UConn team is ranked No. 1 in preseason for the 13th time since 1995 and first since 2017.

“I hope it’s a little bit about confidence building and not, ‘Oh my God!’” Auriemma said. “I’m happy for them. We talk a lot about how we’re not out to prove that we’re the defending national champions or that we’re preseason number one in the country, and we have to beat everyone by 40. We don’t want to fall into that trap. You tend to end the year where you’re predicted to be. So I like being in that position.”

Eight of the previous 12 times UConn was picked first, the Huskies won the national championship. Auriemma thinks his team has a good chance this year.

“It has to come with great leadership and it has to come with a little bit of luck and people up to the task,” he said. “Those four times we didn’t win, we didn’t get lucky or we didn’t stay healthy.”

The top four teams were selected in the same order as in last season’s final ballot. This is the first time in the 50 years of history of the women’s vote that the top four teams in the final poll were the same in the preseason Top 25 the following 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 comes in next with six schools in the poll. The ACC has five and the Big 12 has 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 one game in the NCAA tournament. Big things are expected from this trio of Syla Swords, Mila Holloway and Olivia Olson.

The 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 best freshman seasons in school history averaging 23.3 points and scoring above 50 twice. Coach Shea Ralph’s team was ranked last year for the first time since 2014, when it was on the ballot for two weeks.

Ranked Richmond

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 Atlantic-10 team to rank in the top 25 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 continue to put this program on the map. We talk about it a lot.”

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Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Register here. AP women’s college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-womens-college-basketball-poll And https://apnews.com/hub/womens-college-basketball