South Carolina tops women’s AP Top 25

It’s been a rough week for Ohio State, which lost all three games and consequently plummeted in the AP Top 25.

The previously undefeated Buckeyes fell from second to tenth in The Associated Press’ basketball poll released Monday after losing to Iowa and Indiana, two top-10 teams, and Purdue. Ohio State fell two games behind in the Big Ten Conference rankings.

South Carolina stayed at No. 1 for the 32nd straight week. The Gamecocks, again a unanimous choice of the 28-member national media panel, have the fourth-longest streak of all time at the top of the poll. Only UConn (51 and 34 weeks) and Louisiana Tech (36) had longer runs at #1.

Stanford moved back up to #2 in the poll, and the Cardinal was followed by LSU, Indiana, and UConn in the top five. LSU is the only other undefeated team in women’s basketball, along with South Carolina, to visit UConn for a top-five showdown on Sunday.

Iowa jumped four places to sixth, with Utah, Maryland and Notre Dame finishing ahead of Ohio State. The Hawkeyes started the season No. 4 in the poll.

The Fighting Irish split two games against ranked opponents last week and led Florida State on the run before falling to NC State.

“There’s a lot of ties at the moment, which is great, great for the game,” said Notre Dame coach Niele Ivey. “The game grows what you want. But yeah I mean every night, especially the ACC, the ACC is the strongest league and you know we just have a rough patch every night.”

A week after Texas dropped from the rankings, Texas re-entered the poll at number 24. 14 Oklahoma and Oklahoma State last week. South Florida also came in at number 25. Colorado and Illinois dropped out of the poll.

RISING BULL

No. 25 South Florida continued its streak of being ranked for at least a week each season since the Bulls first took the poll in 2015.

“It’s a great achievement for us not to be going to what’s called a Football Five conference,” said South Florida coach Jose Fernandez. His team has won 10 games in a row and has 20 wins this season. The team’s four losses have all come against ranked opponents (Michigan, Villanova, Ohio State and NC State).

“It’s been fun coaching this group. We always play a great schedule outside of the conference,” said Fernandez. “We won on the road in Texas, beat Alabama, beat Arkansas. We challenged ourselves in November and December.”

RECORD PERFORMANCE

Cameron Brink led Stanford to a win over Oregon with a 10-block triple-double. It was the first triple-double in NCAA Division I women’s basketball with double-digit blocks since Tamari Key made it for Tennessee in an overtime win over Texas on Nov. 21, 2021.

Oklahoma No. 20 Taylor Robertson set the all-time NCAA career record for 3 points when she hit her 498th in a loss to Iowa State on Saturday. Robertson has 503 signups this week. The all-time NCAA record, men or women, is held by Detroit Mercy’s Antoine Davis, who has 534 and counts.