AP Top 25 women’s basketball poll breakdown: Texas replaces Notre Dame at No. 1

For the second straight week in women’s college basketball, the No. 1 ranked team fell. In what felt like the best game of the season in many ways, Notre Dame saw its 19-game win streak snapped in double overtime by N.C. State in a packed Reynolds Coliseum.

The loss for Notre Dame dropped it to third in the latest Associated Press Top 25 Poll released Monday afternoon, while N.C. State was rewarded and elevated to No. 9. The new top-ranked team is Texas, which reaches No. 1 in the poll for the first time since 2004. Back then, Jody Conradt’s team made the Sweet 16 that season, and Vic Schaefer’s squad led by Madison Booker, Rori Harmon and co. seemed to be well-equipped to go at least that far this year.

Texas’ elevation to the top spot marks the first time since the COVID-impacted 2020-21 season that at least four teams have been ranked No. 1 in a single campaign, and speaks to the parity in women’s college basketball this year. As displayed on Sunday, anyone can get got.

It’s also the third straight week that a different team has been ranked No. 1 – just the fifth time that’s happened since 2001.

Florida State and Louisville jumped in, while Georgia Tech and Illinois fell out.

Here’s the full AP Top 25 Poll for this week:

1. Texas
2. UCLA
3. Notre Dame
4. USC
5. UConn
6. South Carolina
7. LSU
8. North Carolina
9. N.C. State
10. TCU
11. Tennessee
12. Ohio State
13. Oklahoma
14. Kansas State
15. Kentucky
16. Duke
17. Baylor
18. West Virginia
19. Maryland
20. Alabama
21. Oklahoma State
22. Creighton
23. Michigan State
24. Florida State
25. Louisville

Others receiving votes:

Georgia Tech 32, South Dakota St. 22, Utah 19, Illinois 14, Richmond 12, California 7, James Madison 5, Mississippi 4, Iowa 2, Harvard 2, Fairfield 1.

Don’t count out Notre Dame just yet

Photo by Nicholas Faulkner/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

I didn’t vote Notre Dame No. 1 this week because voting in the AP Top 25 Poll is a week-to-week evaluation where winners should be rewarded and losers often get dinged.

But if you asked me who I thought was the favorite today to win the national championship, I would still argue in favor of Notre Dame.

N.C. State needed a lot of things to go their way on Sunday to beat the Fighting Irish. The Wolfpack needed Zoe Brooks to play the best game of her career, they needed Aziaha James and Saniya Rivers to keep doing Aziaha James and Saniya Rivers things at a high level, they needed Tilda Trygger to have arguably the best performance of her freshman season, they needed Olivia Miles and Hannah Hidalgo to post among their worst shooting performances of the season, they needed to shoot near-perfect – 24-of-26 – from the free throw line, and they needed the backing of one of the best homecourt crowds in the sport.

Mentioning all of this is not an attempt to discredit N.C. State’s accomplishments and how well it played. The Wolfpack won an incredible game behind some extremely talented players and good coaching, but it speaks to what it takes to beat a team like Notre Dame. What if Miles made a few of the nine 3-pointers she missed? What if Brooks missed a few of those free throws? What if this game was played on a neutral court?

We might find out the answer to that latter question in less than two weeks at the ACC Tournament in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Despite losing to N.C. State, Notre Dame still looks like the top contender because the Irish still look like the best team in a stacked conference. They’re still the only team in the nation with wins over USC, Texas, UConn and North Carolina – all by double figures – and while N.C. State can stake a claim in this debate, Notre Dame still has the best trio of guards in the country, two of which might be top five WNBA Draft picks in April.

Louisville deserves to be ranked

Photo by Erica Denhoff/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

The Cardinals are back in the AP Top 25 Poll for the first time since Dec. 2.

Louisville has played the 17th toughest schedule in the country this season. From the outside looking in, it seemed like coach Jeff Walz – who does his own scheduling instead of delegating it to an assistant – did this purposefully in an attempt to ready a young and new-look team for a hard ACC slate. Louisville has nine freshmen on its roster this year.

And so, the first couple of months were rough. The Cardinals lost to UCLA, Kentucky, Oklahoma, UConn and N.C. State. But since that home loss to the Wolfpack in December, Walz’s team has won 13-of-16 games, including notching a signature victory at Duke last Thursday. The Cardinals handed the Blue Devils their first home defeat of the season behind 24 points and five steals from Jayda Curry.

It was Louisville’s second straight victory on the road over a ranked team, following a win at Florida State. It felt like the culmination of tough scheduling that Walz had done in the non-conference slate, preparing his team for the gauntlet that is the ACC.

But if he could do it over, Walz would’ve done things differently.

“Actually, it was pretty stupid on my part,” Walz said with a grin. “It was really dumb. And I say that because we didn’t have many ball games in the non-conference where I was able to get kids extended minutes of time that you want to try to do earlier in the year… It wasn’t like you were up 30 and everybody can go play. So, that’s an area I’m going to work on scheduling for next year… It’s called job security. If you schedule too hard, it’s not real smart.”

But what’s done is done and Louisville seems better off for having those difficult tests early. Despite losing at home on Sunday to North Carolina by just four points, Walz’s Cardinals are in a position to snatch a top-four seed – and a double-bye – in the ACC Tournament. And seven of eight of Louisville’s losses are to ranked teams.

The Cardinals are once again a lock to make the NCAA Tournament for the 16th time in Walz’s 18 seasons at the helm. And just in time for March Madness, he’s figured out how to maximize a roster with so many new faces on it.

“We’re playing some really good basketball at the right time,” Walz said. “Everybody sort of crossed us off the list when we were 6-5, but it’s the people that don’t know much about our game. It’s not like we played a bad schedule. Our freshmen are playing a lot and they’ve gotten better and better. It’s fun to watch them. We’ve taken a bunch of punches to the mouth.”

The most consistent rookie for Louisville this season has been Tajianna Roberts, who is the only freshman in the ACC averaging at least 13 points, three rebounds and two assists per game. She should make the All-Rookie team in the conference, and if Louisville dances into the second weekend of March Madness, she’ll likely be a big reason why.