South Carolina is No. 1 in The Associated Press preseason women's Top 25, with UConn second and USC third. Duke and Michigan follow, per ESPN. The Gamecocks received 23 first-place votes from a 31-member national media panel, per the AP's report as carried by Yahoo Sports. That is the one vote detail in the coverage we have. None of it says who got the other eight first-place votes.

USC's ranking is the story most outlets led with. CBS Sports' Lindsay Gibbs wrote that JuJu Watkins is back for the 2026-27 season and that the Trojans sit behind only South Carolina and UConn. A ClutchPoints piece on Yahoo describes Watkins as recovering from a torn ACL and looking to help the Trojans "reach new heights." Only that piece mentions the injury. Neither it nor the CBS summary gives a return date or says whether she is fully cleared. Our archive has no player record for her, so we can't show a season line to compare.

The AP's own framing is about the Gamecocks. Doug Feinberg wrote that Dawn Staley has South Carolina "in a familiar place." Chris Cwik at Yahoo wrote that Staley's team "once again reign[s] above the rest of the pack." Our archive's last in-season AP poll, from April 6, had South Carolina second at 36-4, behind UCLA. UCLA was 37-1 and took all 31 first-place votes in that poll. UConn was third at 38-1. The Gamecocks therefore move up one spot from the end of last season, and UConn holds its position.

The top five also reshuffles other teams from April. Duke was fifth then at 27-9 and Michigan seventh at 28-7. Both stay in the top five now, with Michigan up two places. Of the five outlets that name the top five, none says where UCLA landed, so we can't say how far it fell.

The schedules start quickly. UConn opens at home against Cornell on Monday, Nov. 2, the same day USC goes to UNLV. Duke hosts Green Bay the next day, Tuesday, Nov. 3. USC's first game will be the first look at how Watkins is being used. Every team starts 0-0, and our standings tables show USC 16th in the Big Ten for now.