LSU’s Latest NET Ranking Raises Eyebrows After Rough SEC Start
The LSU Tigers women's basketball team looked like a true national championship contender for the first 14 games of the 2025-26 season.
They set an NCAA women's basketball record for the most consecutive games scoring 100 points, with nine, and were blowing out every opponent they were facing en route to going 14-0. While this is an impressive accomplishment, an important asterisk is that the Tigers were facing inferior opponents that had no business competing against them on a basketball court.
Yet, soft non-conference scheduling has always been Kim Mulkey's strategy, and it has worked in the past. However, it hasn't worked this season, as proven by LSU's first two SEC Conference losses, which have caused their record to fall to 14-2. The Tigers haven't been able to win against Kentucky and then Vanderbilt, both of whom they've already played in 2026, which would presumably hurt them during postseason seeding, even if they rebound from these two straight defeats.
Fans can’t believe LSU sustained No. 5 spot in latest NET rankings
The latest women's college basketball NET rankings (which are what seeding for the NCAA tournament is based on) were released on January 5. While the belief was that LSU (ranked No. 5 in the most recent NET rankings update a week ago) would fall after losing two SEC games, it maintained the same No. 5 spot in this January 5 update.
🚨 NET & WAB RANKINGS UPDATE 🚨
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessWBB) January 5, 2026
The #NCAAWBB NET + WAB Rankings are used by the Selection Committee and updated daily. pic.twitter.com/rDcSPYI9Nu
Fans are making their confusion about LSU maintaining its No. 5 spot clear on social media.
"How is LSU #5 in the NET!?!? Back to back losses…?," wrote @Wakefield_Lyle.
"Lsu 😂😂 still ranked them frauds arr still there ain't no way 😂😂😂😂," added @Masego83878533.
"The fact that *they* are still 5 in the net proves how flaws this metric can be," added @Boredy_Mcbored.
"The fact that LSU is at 5 and SC is at 3 shows you how much of a joke this list is...smh. SC has played the toughest non conference schedule before and LSU hasn't played nobody and got mollywhopped since playing 2 conference games," said @DanFord55.
The fact that LSU is at 5 and SC is at 3 shows you how much of a joke this list is...smh. SC has played the toughest non conference schedule before and LSU hasn't played nobody and got mollywhopped since playing 2 conference games.
— Mr. Gas Station Sushi 🦍 (@DanFord55) January 5, 2026
It definitely seems hard to justify Kim Mulkey's squad keeping that spot in the rankings. Yet, there's no question that this is an extremely talented team that is probably just going through a rough patch and will bounce back to championship contention by the time postseason play begins.
Still, a team that lost two straight games having kept its top-five spot in the NET rankings doesn't make sense.
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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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