The preseason AP Top 25 poll has arrived, and it's a fairly accurate picture of what to expect this season in women's college basketball. South Carolina and UConn are No. 1 and No. 2 as expected, and voters are high on USC having a bounce-back year with JuJu Watkins back . They also seem optimistic but also cautious on the rebuilt UCLA Bruins.
But not every ranking feels quite right. Here are three teams who the voters are either too high or too low on heading into the season.
Notre Dame guard Hannah Hidalgo | USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
Notre Dame suffered from mass departures from the program ahead of last season, leaving Hannah Hidalgo as really the last player standing. The team did fine, going 25-11 overall and 12-6 in ACC play. The team ended up making a strong run in the NCAA Tournament, beating Vanderbilt to advance to the Elite Eight. I think that run has people a little too high on the team this year.
Yes, Hidalgo is back, but the second, third and fourth-leading scorers from last year's team all graduated. Lea Macy will need to make a huge leap after missing all of last season and transfer Maddie St. Rose will be counted on to be a big part of this team. There are some intriguing freshmen on the roster, but it's just tough to see this team being better than last season's Notre Dame team. Hidalgo is a great player, but at the same time, it's hard to see much more room for her to get better, which she'd need to do for this to be a top-15 team.
Vanderbilt went 29-5 last season and has one of the nation's best players in Mikayla Blakes as well as a really good guard in Aubrey Galvan, but the roster just feels a bit too unbalanced. Even the team's top freshman, Olivia Jones, is a guard. What about the frontcourt?
Well...yeah, that's the clear weakness here. The team's other three starters graduated, and Georgia transfer Mia Woolfolkis a good offensive player -- she shot 60.2 percent from the floor last season -- but isn't going to offer any rim protection. There's a good chance that teams can just score at will on the interior against this Commodores team.
Ole Miss did a really good job in the transfer portal, adding Jada Richard and Talaysia Cooper, but the same question exists that did last season whenYolett McPhee-McCuin built a strong portal class: how fast can everything coalesce into a good basketball team?
Losing Cotie McMahon to the WNBA will hurt. She was the team's lead scorer last year and the player who everything ran through, and Ole Miss is going to have to very quickly figure out who can replace her production. Otherwise, it's easy to see a scenario where this team lingers right at the cut-off line for the Top 25 for much of the season.
North Carolina Tar Heels guard Reniya Kelly | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
The ACC has three clear favorites this season. Two of those are ranked in the top 10 of the AP poll, but the third, North Carolina, is down at No. 12, just one spot in front of a Notre Dame team that they're arguably a tier above. The team won 28 games last season and brings back nine players from that squad, including Reniya Kelly, who will be tasked with being the team's lead scorer.
UNC also brought in one of the top freshmen in the nation in guard Kate Harpring, who will immediately play a key role on this team. Courtney Banghart has once againbuilt one of the deepest teams in the nation, and the Tarheels should be viewed as a top 10 team heading into this season. (They at least shouldn't be behind a UCLA team that had to bring in a whole new rotation after every key player left for the WNBA.)
The Big Ten is going to be really good this season. Three tams from the conference landed in the top 10 of the preseason poll, while three more appear before you get to Ohio State at No. 18 in the nation. The thing is, I'm not convinced that Washington and Minnesota are better than the Buckeyes.
This team finished fourth in the conference last year and returns Jaloni Cambridge, who averaged 23.2 points per game last season. The team will need to replace Chance Gra's production, but Cambridge's sister, Kennedy, will be a huge part of that. The team returns the Big Ten's blocks leader last year, Elsa Lemmila. It has some really intriguing pieces in Ava Watson and Kylee Kitts.
I understand the concern with Oklahoma State, which is that the Audi Crooks and Liv McGill pairing is going to be a nightmare on the defensive end. I just think that the offensive upside here is so high that the Cowgirls should be ranked higher than No. 22 in the AP poll.
Just look at the Big 12coachespoll.The people who assumedly know the conference best selected Oklahoma State to win the conference, with the Cowgirls receiving seven first-place votes to TCU's six. Yet, the AP poll has TCU up at No. 15, a fairly big gap between the two. This is likely a top-five offense in the nation and while defense is an issue, OSU should be right around where TCU is in the poll.
This article was originally published on www.fansided.com as 3 teams ranked too high and too low in the preseason Women's AP Poll .
