Defending champion UConn 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.
“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.”