For the better part of two decades, the Baylor women's basketball program had been the standard-bearer for the Big 12, winning three national championships under Kim Mulkey and remaining a force under her successor, Nicki Collen.
The Bears haven't exactly gone away. But they're hardly alone at the top these days.
TCU has won the past two regular-season titles. West Virginia is the current Big 12 Tournament champion. And the preseason favorite to win the league this year is Oklahoma State, which loaded up with All-American transfer Audi Crooks — from league rival Iowa State, no less — and Florida's Liv McGill to make a run at the Cowgirls' first trip past the Sweet 16 in school history.
“I think we do have a chip,” said Collen, whose team led by returning All-Big 12 guard Taliah Scott was picked third in the preseason coaches' poll. “Our portal class wasn't ranked but I think it was sneaky good, because they fit what we need. I think we put together a group that has to lean into this gritty approach to being good at what we can be great at.”
Baylor sneaking up on people? That's a new concept.
But so is TCU being a marked program. The Horned Frogs have made back-to-back Elite Eight runs, first led by Hailey Van Lith and last year by Oliva Miles, but prior to that they had not even made the NCAA Tournament since 2010.
“We don't even bring up being the hunted, to be honest,” said TCU coach Mark Campbell, who lost nearly his entire rotation from last season. “To be honest, in college athletics right now, you restart at ground-zero each offseason."
Oklahoma State coach Jacie Hoyt knows that well. The arrival of Crooks and McGill to couple with All-Big 12 guard Stailee Heard gives the Cowgirls one of the best starting trios in the country, and their supporting cast includes Baylor transfer Yuti Deng, Nebraska's Callin Hake, Lindenwood transfer Ellie Brueggemann and Nene Ndiaye from Rutgers.
“Our sisterhood has been tighter than it's ever been. We have no cliques anywhere," Heard said. “I'm in the locker room 30 minutes after practice because it's just so fun. I think the culture in our locker room is unbelievable, and that will take us a long way.”
Just about the only thing Crooks hasn't done during her storied career is win Big 12 player of the year, though she's the preseason pick of the Big 12's coaches this season. To underscore just how good Oklahoma State's transfer class was, the coaches also picked McGill to be the league's newcomer of the year.
Jadyn Wooten went the other direction, leaving Oklahoma State for TCU in the offseason. Other top transfers include West Virginia's Skylar Forbes (Marquette); Baylor guard Trinity Turner (Georgia); and Arizona State's Ruby Whitehorn (Tennessee).
Kansas landed one of the nation's premier freshman classes, headlined by forwards Cydnee Bryant and Brooklynn Renn, giving the Jayhawks a physical presence alongside returning stars S'Mya Nichols and reigning Big 12 freshman of the year Jaliya Davis.
Other top freshmen include Arizona's Arynn Finley and Jasleen Green; Averie Lower of Arizona State; Texas Tech guards Gianna Jordan and Ambrosia Cole; Rylee Little and Peyton Jones of Utah; and Chante Murray of West Virginia.
The only coaching change from last season came at UCF, where the Knights hired former Tennessee assistant Gabe Lazo to replace the fired Sytia Messer. It was a somewhat awkward hiring because Lazo had just been by Mulkey days earlier to be her assistant at LSU.
“It's something you can't say no to,” Lazo said. “I was hoping I would have an opportunity when I saw the job opened.”
Iowa State coach Bill Fennelly has announced his 32nd season with the Cyclones will be his last, which means they will be watching the women's college basketball landscape closely all season as they search for his successor in Ames.
Champion: Oklahoma State; 2) TCU; 3) Baylor; 4) West Virginia; 5) Kansas; 6) Arizona State; 7) BYU; 8) Colorado; 9) Kansas State; 10) Texas Tech; 11) Iowa State; 12) Utah; 13) Arizona; 14) Cincinnati; 15) Houston; 16) UCF.
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FILE - Iowa State center Audi Crooks (55) reacts after making a basket against Syracuse during the second half in the first round of the NCAA college basketball tournament, March 21, 2026, in Storrs, Conn. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration illegally fired Maurene Comey, the daughter of ex-FBI Director and Trump critic James Comey, as a Justice Department prosecutor, a judge ruled Monday, sharply rebuking the administration’s authority to terminate career federal employees it dislikes.
The ruling is tailored to Maurene Comey but its import stretches beyond her case, repudiating the claim of President Donald Trump’s administration that the Constitution permits such firings for any reason. Administration officials have cited that belief repeatedly in a sweeping purge of the federal workforce.
Comey, an assistant U.S. attorney for a decade, was fired in July 2025 despite her work on some of the nation’s highest-profile cases and consistently receiving “the highest accolades from supervisors and peers alike,” Judge Jesse M. Furman found.
After her firing, Comey sued the Justice Department and others, saying her termination violated the constitutional separation of powers, the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
She asserted that she was fired because she was the daughter of James Comey, whom Trump has long viewed as an enemy, or because of her perceived political affiliation and beliefs, or both, the judge noted.
Furman rejected the government's claim that Comey could be fired because federal prosecutors exercise the president's “conclusive and preclusive” powers.
He also said the government's claim that Congress is barred from regulating the removal of federal prosecutors “flies in the face of nearly two centuries of Supreme Court precedent.”
Furman added: “Indeed, to accept Defendants’ argument would be to unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation’s constitutional system.”
The firing violated the separation of powers, the Administrative Procedure Act and her Fifth Amendment due process and statutory rights, the judge ruled. He reserved judgment on Comey's First Amendment claim pending further arguments, though he said he was inclined to dismiss it because it was largely moot since she is now in private practice and no longer seeks actual reinstatement.
Furman, who was nominated to the bench in 2011 by then-Democratic President Barack Obama, granted Comey retroactive reinstatement and back pay from the date of her firing through Dec. 20 to “make her whole” and ensure that she doesn't suffer adverse employment consequences for the “unlawful termination.”
In a statement, the Justice Department said it “disagrees with this decision and will appeal in due course.”
Comey’s lawyers, Ellen Blain, Nicole Gueron, Deepa Vanamali and Margaret Donovan, lauded the ruling.
“This hard-earned victory belongs to Ms. Comey, to all civil servants, and to all fighting for the rule of law,” they said in a statement. “As the Court correctly held, to accept the government’s argument about unlimited executive power ‘would be to unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation’s constitutional system.’ This decision reaffirms our bedrock system of checks and balances: the President is not above the law.”
Comey was fired two weeks after leading the prosecution of music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, which ended in a conviction on prostitution-related charges but an acquittal on others. She also worked on the sex trafficking prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who killed himself in jail a month after his arrest in 2019, and Epstein’s former girlfriend and longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
The Justice Department during the Trump administration has fired scores of career employees, including prosecutors and FBI agents, who participated in investigations of Trump or who were perceived as opposed to the administration’s agenda. Some of those firings have also resulted in federal lawsuits.
The firing of Maurene Comey was seen as particularly personal, given her father’s longtime adversarial relationship with Trump.
The president fired James Comey as FBI director in May 2017 as the bureau was investigating ties between Russia and the Republican’s successful 2016 campaign for the White House. Trump in the years since has repeatedly called for Comey to be jailed, and his Justice Department has worked with mixed success to make that happen.
An earlier criminal case accusing James Comey of having lied to Congress in 2020 was dismissed by a judge who concluded that the prosecutor who filed the charges was illegally appointed. A separate pending indictment charges the former FBI director with threatening Trump through an Instagram photo of seashells in the numerical arrangement of “86 47,” a case he has sought to dismiss that some legal experts have greeted with skepticism.
Tucker and Durkin reported from Washington.
In this photo taken with a smartphone former Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey and her husband Lucas Issacharoff leave a hearing in her lawsuit over her firing by the Justice Department at a Manhattan federal courthouse on Dec. 4, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Michael R. Sisak)
FILE - Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey is outside court during the Sean "Diddy" Combs' sex trafficking trial, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, File)
