UConn tops AP women's preseason poll ahead of South Carolina - ESPN

Defending champion UConn picked up where it left off as the No. 1 team in the country in The Associated Press Top 25 preseason women's basketball poll released Tuesday.

The Huskies received 27 first-place votes from a 31-member national media panel. South Carolina, last season's runner-up to UConn, was picked second in the poll and garnered the other four first-place votes. It's the fifth time in the past six years that Dawn Staley's Gamecocks were picked in the top five of the preseason poll. UCLA and Texas were third and fourth and LSU was fifth.

Oklahoma was sixth, the Sooners' highest preseason ranking since they were fourth in 2008. Duke, Tennessee, NC State and Maryland rounded out the top 10.

First-place votes in parentheses.

Led by sensational sophomore Sarah Strong and super senior Azzi Fudd, Geno Auriemma's UConn squad is ranked No. 1 in the preseason for the 13th time since 1995 and first since 2017.

«Hopefully it's a little bit of a confidence builder and not, 'Oh my god!'» Auriemma said. «I'm happy for them. We talk a lot about how we're not out here to prove that we're defending national champions or we're preseason number one in the country, and we have to beat everybody by 40. We don't want to get caught in that trap. You tend to finish the year where you're predicted. So I like being in this position.»

Eight of the 12 previous times UConn was picked first, the Huskies won the national championship. Auriemma thinks his team has a good shot this year.

«It's got to come with great leadership and it's got to come with a little bit of luck and people rising to the occasion,» he said. «Those four times that we didn't win, we didn't get lucky or we didn't stay healthy.»

The top four teams were picked in the