UCLA and South Carolina Take Leap in Latest NCAA Women's Basketball AP Rankings

Conference championship week delivered in the women's basketball world.

While the UConn Huskies still have their Big East Conference Championship game ahead of them on Monday, all of the other top teams and conferences had their tournaments conclude on Sunday. And since there were no major upsets during earlier rounds in these tournaments (aside from perhaps Notre Dame's loss to Duke in the ACC Tournament semifinal), several of the NCAA's best teams matched up in their conference's championship game.

The most notable of these was South Carolina and Texas playing in the SEC Conference Tournament championship game and USC and UCLA facing off in the Big Ten Conference Tournament championship game.

Both South Carolina and UCLA won these respective games, avenging earlier losses to their opponents from earlier in the season.

And these conference tournament wins worked wonders for both of these teams in the latest NCAA Women's Basketball AP Rankings poll, which was released on Monday.

Both UCLA and South Carolina leapt three spots from the most recent rankings, making it so UCLA is the country's No. 1 seed against while South Carolina is back at No. 2.

The UConn Huskies have remained at their No. 3 seed. After that, USC (who was previously No. 2) slid to No. 4 while Texas dropped to No. 5.

The TCU Horned Frogs, fresh off of their Big 12 Tournament Championship victory, climbed up two spots to round out the top six.

News: UConn women's basketball stays put at No. 3 in this week's AP Top 25 Poll

Huskies take on No. 22 Creighton tonight in the Big East Tournament Championship

New Top 5
UCLA
South Carolina
UConn
USC
Texas
— Maggie Vanoni (@maggie_vanoni) March 10, 2025

Other notable shifts is that Notre Dame dropped to No. 8 while LSU also lost a spot, falling to No. 10.

While these new rankings are interesting, there's no doubt that the NCAA Tournament could still be won by any of these teams.

Recommended Reading: