Dawn Staley has South Carolina in a familiar place, sitting at No. 1 in The Associated Press preseason Top 25 women's basketball poll.
The Gamecocks received 23 first-place votes from a 31-member national media panel Tuesday. UConn, Southern California, Duke and Michigan round out the top five.
It is the fifth time in the past seven years that Staley's team has been ranked No. 1 in the preseason.
“It's a gift and curse,” Staley said. “I tend to not look at the number, but our players do. They look at it and feel like there’s a sense of respect to being No. 1. They also know that it’s pressure-packed. With the type of nonconference schedule we have, we’re going to be challenged. If we stand there at No. 1 at the end of our nonconference season that’s something to be truly to be proud of.”
South Carolina will face five ranked teams in the first month of the season, including UConn, USC and Duke.
“It’s a doozy of a schedule, something we have to do for us to actually keep having the roster we have,” Staley said. “Some of them are NIL games, some of them are games we just got to play because they are super competitive and we want to test ourselves.”
UConn, which lost to South Carolina in the Final Four last season, garnered six first-place votes and has been ranked in the top 10 of every preseason poll since 1994.
This is the third consecutive year that South Carolina and UConn have been 1-2 in the preseason poll, though the Huskies were on top a year ago. The two play each other on Nov. 24 in Uncasville, Connecticut.
USC picked up the other two first-place ballots. Expectations are high for the Trojans, who have a healthy JuJu Watkins back after she missed last season while recovering from a torn ACL suffered in the 2025 NCAA Tournament. The No. 3 ranking matches the one they had two years ago.
Duke has its highest ranking in the preseason poll since 2013 when the Blue Devils were second. Michigan has its best ranking ever in the preseason Top 25. The Wolverines were ranked in the top 10 for the final 18 weeks of the poll last season.
“They came to Michigan to do things that have never been done before,” Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico said of her stellar junior class led by Olivia Olson and Syla Swords. “We're in the position we're in because they came here and made a difference.”
The first regular-season poll will be released Nov. 9.
Texas, Louisville, Vanderbilt, LSU and Iowa round out the top 10. Defending national champion UCLA is next with North Carolina, Notre Dame, Kentucky and TCU following the Bruins.
Washington, Minnesota, Ohio State, Ole Miss and Maryland are 16-20 while the final five in the Top 25 were Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Illinois, West Virginia and N.C. State.
It is the first preseason ranking for No. 17 Minnesota since 2019. Coach Dawn Plitzuweit’s team is coming off its first NCAA Tournament berth since 2018 and first Sweet 16 appearance since 2005, but lost leading scorer Tori McKinney for the season with a knee injury suffered last week in practice.
The Big Ten has nine teams in the Top 25, the most ever for one conference in the preseason poll. The Southeastern Conference has seven, including four in the top 10. The Atlantic Coast Conference has five and the Big 12 three. The Big East has one.
“When I left the Big East we had eight or nine teams in the Top 25 as well and it was the best league in the country. I couldn't imagine I'd go to a place that would be even greater,” said Barnes Arico, who is in her 15th year at Michigan. “With expansion this conference got better and better. The knock has been that the Big Ten hasn't won a championship, but UCLA did that last year and now we have some of the best players in the country returning this year.”
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FILE - Southern California guard JuJu Watkins warms up before a game against Mississippi State in the second round of the NCAA college basketball tournament, March 24, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jessie Alcheh, File)
FILE - South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley reacts during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game against Texas in the final of the Southeastern Conference tournament, March 8, 2026, in Greenville, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File)
