EDITORS/NEWS DIRECTORS:
UConn, UCLA, Texas and South Carolina were the top four teams in the final regular-season Associated Press women’s basketball Top 25 released Monday, matching the No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament that begins today.
The No. 1 Huskies were the overall top seed in the NCAA bracket announced Sunday night. The team that was No. 1 in the poll heading into March Madness has won the NCAA championship 17 times out of 43 early March polls dating to 1982, the first year of the women’s tournament.
The AP has done a final poll after the NCAA Tournament the past two seasons so there is one more poll this season on April 6, and it will be the final Top 25 poll in the 50th year of the women's poll.
The No. 2 Bruins picked up one more first place vote this week, giving them three from the 31-member national media panel. UConn received the other 28. With so few games last week that involved ranked teams — only UConn and Princeton played and both won — the Top 25 didn’t change much from the week before.
LSU, Vanderbilt, Iowa and Duke followed No. 3 Texas and No. 4 South Carolina. Michigan and West Virginia rounded out the top 10 teams. All will host NCAA Tournament games this weekend. West Virginia flipped places with Ohio State, moving up to No. 11.
See below for some of our March Madness coverage and previous reporting on the Top 25 Women's poll, with corresponding graphics and interactives, including a database of all teams included in the poll since it's inception.
___
WILL YOU BE IN ARIZONA FOR THE WOMEN’S FINAL FOUR?
AP is hosting an exhibit April 2-5 celebrating the greatest programs, players and coaches in a culmination of a season long look at the 50-year history of the women’s Top 25 basketball poll. The event is open to the public and will feature several panels of newsmakers discussing how the poll has served as roadmap for the growth of the sport. The exhibit will be at Arizona State’s First Amendment Forum in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
___
FOLLOW AP'S WOMENS' MARCH MADNESS COVERAGE
The UConn Huskies are the defending champion and the last time they didn’t win another one the next year was way back in 2000. UConn won three straight titles in 2002-04, back-to-back crowns in 2009-10 and four in a row from 2013-16.
The beloved annual tradition that is the NCAA Tournament opened with Selection Sunday last weekend, opening the door for hundreds of thousands of fans to fill out brackets and take a shot at winning the office pool.
The tournament tips off with the First Four on March 18-19, with the first round starting March 20 at sites across the country. For the first time, the NCAA will punish teams that do not provide player availability reports. Fines start at $10,000. The reports are intended to to combat betting-related pressure, solicitations and harassment athletes receive from bettors connected to their playing status.
If you like the tourney at 68 teams, enjoy the moment! Discussions continue on whether to expand the field by at least four teams and possibly more.
March Madness: How to watch and what to watch in the women’s NCAA Tournament
AP coverage advisory: 2026 NCAA basketball tournaments
UConn, UCLA, Texas and South Carolina, all No. 1 seeds, top final AP Top 25 before March Madness
NCAA Women's Bracket (downloadable)
___
FIND YOUR SCHOOL: 50 YEARS OF THE WOMEN'S POLL
Take a stroll through the 50-year history of the women’s Top 25 basketball poll that launched in 1976. Find how your favorite team has done over the history of the poll, search where schools were ranked in specific years, and much more. (Find embed code at end of guide.)
How frequently have schools in your state appeared on the poll? Did area schools go through a peak in their program that landed them in the poll repeatedly? When was that? How have your school's traditional rivals fared in the history of the poll?
___
FIND YOUR SCHOOL: TOP SCHOOLS DURING THE WOMEN'S POLL ERA
View the list of top teams here. 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. UConn came out on top. (Find embed code at end of guide.)
___
FIND YOUR STATE: TOP PLAYERS DURING THE WOMEN’S POLL ERA
A look at the top players during the 50 years of the women’s poll as voted on by panel of former players, media representatives and AP sports writers/editors. Players were voted on based on their collegiate careers. Click icon position to see players. (Find embed code at end of guide.)
___
ADDITIONAL AP POLL COVERAGE
Poll era G-O-A-T? Current USA Basketball players say it’s Breanna Stewart, others might disagree 12/31/25
Best women’s programs during poll era? UConn, Tennessee head all-time Top 25 with some surprises 12/29/25
Mel Greenberg marks 50 years since starting women’s basketball poll 11/6/25
The greatest women’s college basketball players: Who made the list? 10/16/25
___
EMBED THESE GRAPHICS
Women’s College Basketball: Top 25 Poll
This searchable and sortable table shows the past 50 years of AP’s Women’s College Basketball Top 25 Poll, tracking the performance of teams in the NCAAW. This table is current as of October 9, 2025.
To embed, insert this code into your CMS:
!-- start AP embed --
iframe src=“https://interactives.ap.org/womens-basketball-top-25-table/” class=“ap-embed” width=“100%” frameborder=“0″ scrolling=“no” marginheight=“0″/iframescript defer src=“https://interactives.ap.org/womens-basketball-top-25-table/resize-client.js” type=“text/javascript”/script
!-- end AP embed --
— —
Greatest Women's College Basketball players
This graphic looks at the top players during the 50 years of the women’s poll as voted on by panel of former players, media representatives and AP sports writers/editors. This graphic is current as of Oct. 16, 2025 and will not update. Source: AP
To embed, insert this code into your CMS:
!-- start AP embed --
div class=“flourish-embed flourish-interactive diagram” data-src=“visualisation/25568406?1815476″script src=“https://public.flourish.studio/resources/embed.js”/scriptnoscriptimg src=“https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/25568406/thumbnail” width=“100%” alt=“interactive diagram visualization” //noscript/div
!-- end AP embed --
— —
Best women's programs during the poll era
To embed, insert this code into your CMS:
!-- start AP embed --
iframe title=“UConn is top team in poll era according to AP data” aria-label=“Table” id=“ap-chart-PFQyk” src=“https://interactives.ap.org/embeds/PFQyk/8/” scrolling=“no” width=“100%” style=“border:none” height=“1474″/iframescript type=“text/javascript”!function()(“use strict”;window.addEventListener(“message”,(function(e)(if(void 0!==e.data(“datawrapper-height”))(var t=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var a in e.data(“datawrapper-height”))for(var r=0;rt.length;r++)(if(t(r).contentWindow===e.source)t(r).style.height=e.data(“datawrapper-height”)(a)+“px”))))))();/script
!-- end AP embed --
___
Localize It is a resource produced regularly by The Associated Press for its customers’ use. Questions can be directed to the Local News Success team at localizeit@ap.org. View guides published in the last 30 days here.
