UConn has won 12 women’s basketball national championships. Tennessee has won eight. Nobody else comes close.
And that’s why it should be no surprise to see those two powerhouse programs ranked atop The Associated Press Top 25 all-time rankings, part of the season-long coverage of 50 years of the women’s basketball poll.
Stanford, Louisiana Tech and Baylor rounded out the top 5 after UConn and Tennessee.
“Individual numbers are cool, but the fact that as you look through it, a lot of the other names, lots of them have come and gone, but we were a constant for that whole time and we’re still there and that’s a long time,” said UConn coach Geno Auriemma, whose Huskies are currently No. 1 in this season’s poll.
Having the Huskies and the Lady Vols atop the all-time poll might be considered a given. There may be a few surprises as well.
To compile the poll, The AP, using the data from the nearly 900 polls that have ranked teams over the last 50 years, developed a formula that included factors such as how many appearances a team has made in the poll and its average ranking.
Tennessee, for example, has far more poll appearances than any other team — 802 and counting, well ahead of No. 2 Texas (651) and No. 3 UConn (647). But when taking just average ranking, the top three would be UConn (4.1), followed by Louisiana Tech (5.8) and Wayland Baptist (5.9). Cal State Fullerton would be eighth on that list, despite appearing in the poll only 11 times and not at all since 1991.
All 161 programs who have appeared in the poll factored into the calculations for the 50th anniversary poll — even Fordham, Georgia State, Oral Roberts, Richmond, Arkansas State and San Diego, the six schools that have been ranked exactly one time.
But in the end, it was Auriemma’s UConn and the Tennessee program that Pat Summitt built that topped all others.
“It’s hard to break into what Pat Summitt and Geno, what they’ve done in the time that they’ve served our game,” South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said at last season’s Final Four.
Since UConn’s first appearance at No. 1 in 1995 after beating Tennessee on Martin Luther King Day, UConn has held the top spot in the poll for 259 weeks — more than double the Lady Vols during their dominant run.
“From 35 years ago when we first were ranked to now, we haven’t been far from No. 1,” Auriemma said. “So, that’s pretty cool.”
Louisiana Tech holds the third-longest streak of being ranked No. 1 in the women’s poll, owning the top spot for 38 consecutive weeks. The Lady Techsters were dominant for the first two decades of the poll although they haven’t been in the Top 25 since 2006.
Notre Dame, South Carolina, Texas, Duke and Maryland round out top 10. The Gamecocks had a run early in the poll, climbing to No. 2 in 1982 and didn’t return to the top five until the current era under Staley. Her team has rarely been out of the top 10 since 2014.
Georgia, Old Dominion, LSU, Long Beach State and Louisville followed the Terrapins. From 1979-92 the Beach was a mainstay in the poll but the program hasn’t been ranked since the early 90s — and hasn’t been past the first round of the NCAA tournament since 1991. Long Beach State entered Monday at 0-11 this season.
The No. 16-20 spots belong to North Carolina, USC, N.C. State, Wayland Baptist and UCLA. Wayland Baptist’s “Flying Queens” were ranked in every poll from the first one in 1976 to the final poll for the 1978-79 season. Wayland Baptist was ranked twice in 1980 before dropping out for good, and has spent more than 40 years playing as members of the NAIA.
Virginia, Penn State, Ohio State, Rutgers and Iowa round out the Top 25.
Texas Tech, Delta State and Cheyney were all dominant programs at times during the poll era, but finished just outside the all-time Top 25. Others that came close to the list include Oklahoma, Purdue and Vanderbilt.
Poll history
Founded by the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Mel Greenberg in 1976, it began six years before the first NCAA Tournament. The first poll was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer in November 1976. Two years later The Associated Press started distributing it around the country. Coaches voted in the poll until it shifted to journalists before the 1994-95 season and The AP took over running it. There have been 161 different teams ranked and 26 of them have held the No. 1 spot.
Conference supremacy
So many teams have changed conferences over the years, but using the current alignments, the Big Ten would have eight teams with the ACC getting seven. The SEC would have five. The Big 12, Big East, Sun Belt, and Conference USA would each have one. Wayland Baptist has dropped down to NAIA.
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