Chaos. That's what the past week was in women's college basketball: the most chaotic week we've seen this season. Since the last AP poll, four ranked teams suffered multiple loss, headlined by a pair of defeats for No. 5 LSU.
Additionally, six unranked teams earned wins over ranked teams this week, including a pair of unranked teams beating Notre Dame. All this is bound to lead to the largest shake-up of the AP poll all season, and predicting where teams will land this week was difficult. In fact, this is the least confident I've been all season about what the voters will do.
Alas, even if I wind up being wrong about how the voters will rank teams after this wild week, I must still push on. Here's my projection of what Monday's AP Top 25 poll will look like after a week filled with upsets. (Also worth noting here — there was no poll last week because of the holidays, but I didn't realize that until I'd already written about what it would look like. Oops! Anyway, check out that article for my thoughts on Ohio State's loss to UCLA and Michigan State's win over Ole Miss. I'm counting those as part of this week's results when discussing how this week went, by the way.)
Projected AP Top 25 women's college basketball rankings
- UConn
- Texas
- South Carolina
- UCLA
- Oklahoma
- Vanderbilt
- Kentucky
- Michigan
- Maryland
- LSU
- Louisville
- Iowa
- TCU
- Iowa State
- Texas Tech
- Baylor
- Michigan State
- Tennessee
- USC
- North Carolina
- Ohio State
- Ole Miss
- Princeton
- Washington
- Illinois
Down goes LSU and up goes Vanderbilt
LSU plays a weak non-conference schedule every year, then turns on the jets once SEC play begins, but this season the ignition switch didn't light up.
The Tigers faced just one team with a top 100 Her Hoop Stats rating in non-conference, beating Duke 93-77 in a game that was closer than the score showed. The lack of preparedness for big games bit the team this week in close losses to Kentucky and Vanderbilt. The team simply couldn't generate offense against SEC defenses, especially against Vanderbilt, as the Tigers scored just 61 points. Flau'jae Johnson was completely taken out of the game, going 0-for-4 from the field and getting benched by Kim Mulkey for a long stretch.
Look: I don't expect LSU's losing streak to keep going. This was a tough start to conference play, but it gets easier with a game against Georgia this week. Beyond that, though, are back-to-back meetings with Texas and Oklahoma before the schedule finally eases up for a longer stretch. We could easily be looking at a four-loss LSU team later this month and wondering how the Tigers were ranked so high for the whole first half of the season.
And while we're here, Vanderbilt! Losing Khamil Pierre to NC State was expected to really stall out some of the positive momentum built by this team last season, but Mikayla Blakes is showing that she can lead a team alone, and her supporting cast is doing what it needs to do. The Commodores are one of four remaining undefeated teams and should win three more in a row before their next big test on Jan. 19 against Michigan.
Making sense of the Big 12
The Big 12 looked pretty clear: TCU and Iowa State were, in some order, the clear top two teams, and then a glut of teams were fighting it out to be the best of the second tier.
Then this week happened. Iowa State lost to Baylor. TCU lost to unranked Utah. Texas Tech keeps winning and is one of just four undefeated teams left in Division I.
So, what do the voters make of the conference? Honestly...I don't know. I think some will be reactionary and drop both below Baylor and Texas Tech, but I think enough will stand by their preconceived ideas that the Horned Frogs and Cyclones will remain the highest-ranked Big 12 teams. The gap will have just shrunk a lot.
One thing to keep in mind: Baylor might have a head-to-head win over Iowa State, but the Bears still have three total losses, including one to Texas Tech. And Tech has been good, but hasn't played the top two teams in the conference yet, so I imagine a number of people aren't fully ready to trust Krista Gerlich's program.
Notre Dame is falling apart
I've been relatively low on Notre Dame all season. The program just lost so much talent this past offseason and I wasn't sure if Hannah Hidalgo alone could make the Irish into contenders.
Notre Dame went 1-2 against ranked teams in non-conference, but beat every non-ranked team it faced, so starting ACC play out against Georgia Tech and Duke seemed easy, right?
Nope. After losing in overtime to the Yellow Jackets, the Irish were crushed by the Blue Devils, losing 82-68 and not winning a single quarter. The team just doesn't have enough scoring outside of Hidalgo, and that's something that's now officially caught up to it.
Have the No. 1 seeds already been locked in?
Debate order all you want, but something seems very clear at the moment: UConn, Texas, South Carolina and UCLA will be the No. 1 seeds. Losses by LSU, Michigan, Maryland, TCU and Iowa State this week give the top four a pretty good margin of error and now instead of a situation where, say, an LSU upset win over South Carolina in the SEC Tournament could propel the Tigers into a top seed, we're basically looking at a scenario where one of those teams has to have a full-on collapse.
Because look — the two undefeated teams who aren't UConn or Texas are Vanderbilt and Texas Tech. Two good teams, but it's unrealistic to think they both run the table here, right?
The better question now? Which of these teams is the favorite to win it all. Undefeated UConn and Texas clearly lead the pack, though don't count out South Carolina and UCLA. The Bruins feel especially dangerous with a roster that's full of future pro talents.