Duke and Notre Dame Plummet AP NCAA Rankings After Brutal Defeats

Several teams have fallen in the AP Top 25 women's basketball rankings after tough losses.

Notre Dame guard Hannah Hidalgo expresses frustration with an official's call during a NCAA women's basketball game between No. 3 Notre Dame and No. 24 Florida State at Purcell Pavilion on Thursday, Feb. 27, 2025, in South Bend. | MICHAEL CLUBB/SOUTH BEND TRIBUNE / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Despite the 2025-26 NCAA women's basketball season being only two weeks old to this point, there have already been several surprising outcomes from teams expected to contend for a championship.

The two main examples of this were the Notre Dame Fighting Irish's brutal 93-54 defeat to the Michigan Wolverines on November 15, which marked the worst loss that head coach Niele Ivey has sustained since coming to Notre Dame in 2020.

But that wasn't even the most shocking result of the past few days. The Duke Blue Devils women's team, which is led by Team USA head coach Kara Lawson (who will coach Team USA in the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics), lost to the unranked West Virginia Mountaineers by a score of 57-49 on November 15. What's more, West Virginia completed this upset with five available players because their entire bench was ejected after storming the court because of a scuffle between two players at the end of the first half.

This was the second loss of Duke's season, thus bringing their record to a disappointing 2-2.

Mar 30, 2025; Birmingham, AL, USA; Duke Blue Devils head coach Kara Lawson coaches her team during the second half of an Elite 8 NCAA Tournament basketball game against the South Carolina Gamecocks at Legacy Arena. Mandatory Credit: Vasha Hunt-Imagn Images | Vasha Hunt-Imagn Images

Duke, Notre Dame Fall Down AP Rankings After Tough Weeekend

The college basketball community was expecting both Duke (which started the season as the country's No. 7-ranked team) and Notre Dame (which was ranked No. 15 in the preseason) to fall once the most recent AP Rankings were revealed.

However, some were stunned by just how much Duke dropped when these new AP Top 25 rankings came out on November 17.

Lawson's Duke squad dropped out of the rankings entirely this week after going from No. 7 to No. 15 between the first two weeks. As for Notre Dame, they dropped to No. 18 last week and have now fallen six more spots to No. 24.

Week 2 AP Top 25 Rankings 👀#NCAAWBB pic.twitter.com/5YoCl187Pk

— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessWBB) November 17, 2025

Some other notable movements were that the USC Trojans dropped three spots to No. 11 after losing to No. 2-ranked South Carolina, Michigan jumped eight spots to No. 6 after the dominant win over Notre Dame, and TCU jumped seven spots to No. 10. North Carolina, NC State, and Tennessee all dropped several spots, as well.

The top five teams in the country remain steady, with UConn at No. 1, then South Carolina, then UCLA at No. 2, Texas at No. 4, and the LSU Tigers at No. 5.

UConn plays Michigan on November 21, and Notre Dame and USC face each other on that same day. So there could be some real movement once next week's rankings are released.