The march toward the 2026-27 women's college basketball season is underway with the reveal of both the USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll preseason top 25 along with the rankings from The Associated Press.
Both the Coaches Poll and AP voters selected Dawn Staley's South Carolina Gamecocks as the preseason No. 1 team in the country. The Gamecocks have gone to six consecutive Final Fours and will be expected to reach the national semifinals again this season. South Carolina returns All-American Joyce Edwards and will once again have strength in frontcourt depth with Chloe Kitts, Ashlyn Watkins, Oliviyah Edwards and Alicia Tournebize rotating through the post.
From there, the voters do have a few small differences in their voting, though the polls do feature the same top-10 teams (different ordering notwithstanding). The coaches poll, for example, has Shea Ralph and Vanderbilt ranked over Kim Mulkey's LSU team while the AP has them flipped. Defending national champion UCLA, which lost its top six players to the WNBA, is ranked No. 11 is the AP and No. 12 in the coaches.
With that, here's a look at the USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll and AP Top 25 – as well as how they differ:
Women's college basketball preseason rankings
First-place vote in parentheses
USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll
- South Carolina (26)
- UConn (6)
- USC
- Duke
- Michigan
- Texas
- Louisville
- LSU
- Vanderbilt
- Iowa
- North Carolina
- UCLA
- Notre Dame
- Kentucky
- Washington
- TCU
- Maryland
- Minnesota
- Oklahoma State
- Ohio State
- Oklahoma
- Illinois
- Mississippi
- West Virginia
- North Carolina State
Others receiving votes: Baylor 44; Arizona State 42; Nebraska 40; Tennessee 20; Michigan State 18; Gonzaga 15; South Dakota State 11; Oregon 9; Oregon State 8; Rice 5; Villanova 5; Princeton 4; Florida 3; James Madison 3; Texas Tech 3; Clemson 2; Fairfield; Kansas 2; Virginia 2.
AP poll
- South Carolina (23)
- UConn (6)
- USC (2)
- Duke
- Michigan
- Texas
- Louisville
- Vanderbilt
- LSU
- Iowa
- UCLA
- North Carolina
- Notre Dame
- Kentucky
- TCU
- Washington
- Minnesota
- Ohio State
- Mississippi
- Maryland
- Oklahoma
- Oklahoma State
- Illinois
- West Virginia
- NC State
Others receiving votes: Nebraska 47, Arizona State 36, Baylor 31, Virginia 30, Michigan State 16, Kansas 12, Tennessee 9, Alabama 7, Syracuse 5, Villanova 5, Fairfield 2, Oregon 2, Rice 2, Georgia 2, Colorado 2, Virginia Tech 1, Clemson 1
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Women's college basketball rankings: Preseason USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll, AP Top 25