Women's March Madness 2026: Ranking the Final Four - ESPN

For the second season in a row, South Carolina, Texas, UCLA and UConn have reached the Final Four. And it's no surprise.

From the moment UConn cut down the nets in Tampa a year ago, the Gamecocks, Longhorns, Bruins and Huskies were deemed the four best teams headed into this season — and they lived up to it. They have run up a combined record of 143-7, and the closest game any of them has had in the NCAA tournament is UConn's 12-point win over Notre Dame in the Elite Eight. That's the same Huskies team that has won 54 times in a row.

This marks the second time in women's NCAA tournament history that all four teams ran it back to the Final Four. This is also just the fifth time all four No. 1 seeds made it through the bracket; it also happened in 1989, 2012, 2015 and 2018.

And while Friday's UConn-South Carolina national semifinal (7 p.m. ET, ESPN) is a rematch of the 2025 NCAA title game, the UCLA-Texas semifinal is a rematch from earlier this season. The Longhorns beat the Bruins on Nov. 26 at the inaugural Players Era Championship in Las Vegas.

Having familiar matchups or the same quartet in the semifinals doesn't mean we will have the same results. It also doesn't mean our rankings have stayed the same. Here is one last look at how the remaining teams in the field stack up heading into Phoenix.

1. UConn Huskies
Original seed: No. 1 overall (Fort Worth 1)
Results: Def. No. 16 UTSA 90-52 (first round); def. No. 9 Syracuse 98-45 (round of 32); def. No. 4 North Carolina 63-42 (Sweet 16); def. No. 6 Notre Dame 70-52 (Elite Eight)

Geno Auriemma was vocal about the setup at the regionals and how he believed it was impacting offense. His Huskies, who entered the NCAA tournament as the second-most accurate 3-point shooting