UConn. Texas. South Carolina. UCLA. Heck, even Vanderbilt and LSU and Michigan. These are the elite teams that people expect to make deep runs in the NCAA Tournament. But what about teams like ... Georgia? Rhode Island?? BYU???
If we're talking championship contenders or even just Final Four contenders, women's college basketball remains a pretty flat landscape. None of the following unranked teams are going to win a championship this season. However, that doesn't mean they aren't worth taking note of, because each of these teams has the ability to take down a good opponent in the first or second round of the tournament. Maybe they won't win a title, but the right upset in the right matchup means they could play a hand in determining who does win a title.
Georgia
After years of success under past coaches, Georgia entered the 2025-26 season in a weird spot under head coach Katie Abrahamson-Henderson.
Coach | Career Win Percentage at Georgia |
|---|---|
Andy Landers | 74.25% |
Joni Taylor | 65.9% |
Katie Abrahamson-Henderson | 49.0% (not counting this season) |
It's been awhile since Georgia was viewed as an elite program — the Bulldogs last made it to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament in 2013 — but winning records were still the norm. That changed over the past two seasons, as Georgia plummeted to the bottom of the SEC.
But things appear to have turned around. The Bulldogs are 16-3, and those three losses are all to ranked teams: South Carolina, LSU and Ole Miss. But Georgia was able to enact revenge on Ole Miss last time out, winning 82-59 and really asserting how good this team can be.
Georgia sits 13th in the nation in defensive rating, and it's done that without necessarily forcing turnovers. Instead, the Bulldogs are pressuring opposing shooters, leading to an opponent field goal percentage of just 34.9, the 13th-lowest in the nation.
BYU
After starting the season 19-0, Texas Tech has dropped two in a row, including Wednesday night's 73-61 loss to BYU. Delaney Gibb, who missed eight games earlier in the season, scored 18 points on 5-for-10 shooting and went a perfect 3-for-3 from deep while adding five rebounds, six assists, four steals and one block.
When Gibb is at 100 percent, she's one of the nation's most underrated players. The Cougars are 6-1 when Gibb shoots 40 percent or better, with the lone loss coming by three points to Arizona. Gibb is the kind of player who can just go on an absolute heater, leaving opponents hoping they can outscore her instead of stopping her.
Yes, BYU is only 1-3 against ranked teams this season, but that shouldn't detract from what's been a surprisingly good campaign in Lee Cummard's first year at the helm for the Cougars. If this team continues to gel and Gibb stays healthy, this won't be BYU's only upset win.
Fairfield
There were a number of people who entered the year high on the Stags, because the Stags have an elite player in Meghan Andersen and have been very good over the past two seasons. Unfortunately, a lot of that excitement was muted after double-digit losses to North Carolina and Iowa.
Still, this is a good basketball team. It had non-conference wins over Villanova, South Florida and Richmond, and while defense has been an issue at times, offense sure hasn't been: Fairfield ranks 15th in Division I in offensive rating, 20th in field goal percentage and fourth in 3-point field goal percentage, leading to the team averaging 1.19 points per scoring attempt, the third-best mark in the nation.
One key has been the breakout performance of Kaety L'Amoreaux, who has actually been the team's top scorer over Andersen. The two of them make for a lethal combination. Check out their percentile rank in some key categories:
Points | 3-Point FG % | Points per Play | Offensive Win Shares | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Meghan Andersen | 98th | 82nd | 96th | 97th |
Kaety L'Amoreaux | 99th | 88th | 98th | 99th |
Together, the two form one of the most unstoppable offensive combinations in the nation. Of course, playing elite SEC teams in the tournament is a recipe for a drop in efficiency, but if the Stags could get up to the 12 line by the time the NCAA Tournament arrives, then the right matchups could fall into place for a Sweet Sixteen run.
Rhode Island
The Rams won 17 games last season. The Rams have also won 17 games this season. The difference? It's Jan. 22, not the end of the season.
Defense has been Rhode Island's calling card for years, with the team finishing in at least the 93rd percentile in opponent points in five straight seasons. Offense, though, has been a season-to-season roller coaster, but this year's offense has been solid. While 68.1 points per game might not sound like a ton, we have to factor the team's slow pace into things. Per 100 possessions, the Rams average 101.9 points, the 65th-best mark in the nation.
The offense hasn't been, like, that efficient, ranking just 123rd in field goal percentage and 73rd in points per play, but it's been enough. The Rams excel at creating these slow, dense games where points are at a premium, and it helped them score a big upset win over Richmond, holding the Spiders to just 61 points. Richmond averages 74.4.
Utah
Finally, we head back to the state of Utah and the Big 12. This time, it's the state's flagship school, Utah. This was supposed to be a rebuilding year after Gianna Kneepkens left for UCLA, but the team is rolling along at 14-5.
Lani White — who played two seasons at Utah before transferring to Virginia Tech and then returning to Utah this season — has stepped up as the lead scorer, and while the team's overall numbers look rather pedestrian with its offensive rating sitting 97th in Division I and defensive rating 133rd, a tough schedule has been partly responsible for that, including a 52-point non-conference loss to UConn that sways some of those numbers.
However, Utah showed what it can do when firing on all cylinders earlier this month, knocking off TCU in overtime to claim the program's marquee win of the season. Consistency is an issue, but the night that the Utes are on, they're really on.