And then there were three. With Texas losing to LSU this week, just three undefeated teams remain in women's college basketball: UConn, Vanderbilt and Texas Tech. It's a surprising list — the Huskies being undefeated is pretty normal, but the other two teams? No one was projecting that before this season began.
Last week's AP poll saw a number of shake-ups, and another week of SEC upsets means that this week will feature plenty of movement as well.
Here's my projection for what Monday's AP Top 25 poll will look like after a week that saw multiple ranked teams go down.
Projected AP Top 25 women's college basketball rankings
- UConn
- Texas
- South Carolina
- UCLA
- Vanderbilt
- Michigan
- Louisville
- Kentucky
- LSU
- Maryland
- TCU
- Oklahoma
- Michigan State
- Iowa
- Texas Tech
- Baylor
- Ole Miss
- Ohio State
- Tennessee
- Iowa State
- Alabama
- Notre Dame
- Princeton
- North Carolina
- Nebraska
Texas loses to LSU, but should remain at No. 2
The SEC is wild this season. LSU came into Sunday's meeting with Texas with an 0-2 record against ranked SEC teams, but then handed the Longhorns their first loss of the season, knocking them off 70-65.
Madison Booker did her thing, going 10-for-16 with 24 points, but the rest of the roster couldn't manage much scoring against an aggressive LSU defense. Notably, Jordan Lee and Rori Harmon were a combined 4-for-18 from the floor.
Despite the loss, I think the voters keep Texas at No. 2. Maybe some will move the Horns down because of recency bias, but the situation here feels simple to me. Voters aren't ready to consider Vanderbilt as a top four team, so the only teams that could pass Texas are South Carolina and UCLA, and Texas already has head-to-head wins over both teams.
As for LSU, it'll be interesting to see what voters do. After losing twice last week, the team dropped from No. 5 to No. 12, but a win like this should at least put the Tigers back in the top 10.
Iowa State's collapse
It's not necessarily that Audi Crooks has been "figured out." It's just that teams seem to have found a way to guard her that limits her impact just enough that the Cyclones become beatable. And not just "beatable," but like...very beatable, as the team has lost three in a row.
Two things have primarily led to this losing streak. First is that teams have realized that while they can't stop Crooks, they can limit her impact a bit by doubling her, putting one player in front and one behind to kind of wall her off. They can get away with that right now because the team's other top scorer, Addy Brown, has missed the last two games, so the player most likely to make the opposition pay isn't out there. The team lacks reliable scoring beyond this duo, so the bleeding might not stop until the Cyclones get Brown back.
It's time to talk about Alabama
One-loss Alabama should make its first poll appearance of the season. Looking back, it's a little wild that it's taken this long, as the only loss on the team's schedule was against No. 3 South Carolina.
However, the Tide lacked a marquee win. Before this week's big upset victory over Kentucky, Alabama's best win was against Minnesota, a team that I personally think is better than the voters do but that probably wasn't moving the needle much as far as the perception of Alabama went.
But now that Alabama has knocked off a top 10 team, it can no longer be ignored. This has been one of the nation's best defensive teams, fueled by an interior defense that has the team in the top 25 in both blocks and block rate. Essence Cody has been especially good in the paint.
The Tide will end the season with a rough stretch, with four of their final five games against Oklahoma, South Carolina, Vanderbilt and Texas. However, there's plenty of time before that for the team to build a very good at-large resume.