Iowa Hawkeyes Skyrocket AP Top 25 NCAA Rankings After Hot Season Start
Before their first game of the 2024-25 NCAA season, the Iowa Hawkeyes women's basketball team had a lot of changes that impacted the program.
The Hawkeyes were coming off two consecutive trips to the NCAA national championship game, both of which ended with them as runner-ups. Of course, much of this success was owed to generational talent Caitlin Clark, who finished her career as the NCAA's all-time leading scorer, both in the men's and women's game.
Clark left Iowa for the WNBA after the 2023-24 season. While this alone would have made the next season difficult, the Hawkeyes also had to deal with longtime head coach Lisa Bluder retiring after 24 seasons running the program. The good news was that Bluder's top assistant, Jan Jensen, took over. But losing Clark and Bluder in the same offseason created a lot of adversity.
The Hawkeyes handled this well in the 2024-25 season, finishing the year with a 23-11 record and advancing to the second round of the 2025 NCAA tournament before losing to Oklahoma.
Iowa Ascend AP Rankings After 6-0 Start to 2025-26 Season
However, this 2025-26 season surely felt like a clean slate for Iowa. The narrative is no longer how this team could manage without Clark (and Kate Martin) on the court, and Jan Jensen has had an entire year at the Hawkeyes' helm. So there was a lot of interest about how this team would do.
And the Hawkeyes have excelled thus far. They've started the season off with a sterling 6-0 record, which included an upset 57-52 win over Baylor on November 20, who entered that game as the country's No. 7-ranked team.
The Hawkeyes started the season as the country's No. 21-ranked team according to the AP Top 25 rankings. They had jumped up several spots to No. 19 at this time last week.
However, when the November 24 edition of the AP rankings was released, it showed that the Hawkeyes have jumped all the way up to No. 11. This increase of 8 spots is the most out of any team this week, and shows that Iowa's successful start to the year is no fluke.
New AP Top 25 women’s poll. #Cyclones into top 10. #Hawkeyes make biggest jump to 11. Back-to-back.
— Keith Murphy (@MurphyKeith) November 24, 2025
1. UConn
2. South Carolina
3. UCLA
4. Texas
5. LSU
6. Michigan
7. Maryland
8. TCU
9. Oklahoma
10. Iowa State
11. Iowa
Jensen's Hawkeyes squad should have a relatively easy go of things from now until December 10, when they face cross-town rival Iowa State. Given that the Cyclones are ranked No. 10 in this week's AP poll, this showdown will show a lot about which Iowa team reigns supreme at this point.
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Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.
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