Coach Dawn Staley has South Carolina back, where her team began the season: No. 1 in the Associated Press women’s college basketball poll.
Gamecocks regained first place on Monday, receiving 29 of the 30 first-place votes from a national media panel.
Gamecocks will be tested immediately; they visit No. 2 UConn on Monday night in the 60th showdown between the first two voting teams.
South Carolina, which originally fell from first place after losing to the State of North Carolina, appears to have two consecutive wins over UConn after defeating the Huskies for the first time in eight attempts last season, 70-52.
“It’s less pressure, but more hunger,” said Staley on Saturday. “Beating someone at home is a little easier than beating them on the road. And I just hope we can get that off the list and continue what UConn used to do with us: join those victories and not look back.”
These same two teams met five years ago in another competition. The positions were reversed and the Huskies remained the number 1 team with a 12 point win.
UConn moved up one position to No. 2 on Monday after then-No. 1 Louisville lost at home to No. 4 in the state of North Carolina last Monday. The Cardinals fell to third place and Wolfpack remained in fourth. They lost to North Carolina unrated on Sunday.
No. 5. Stanford, Texas A&M and Baylor each rose one position, while UCLA, Maryland and Arizona completed the top 10. Arizona visit No. 11 Oregon on Monday night.
Here is other information from the poll:
HISTORIC MARK
Monday marked the 800th college women’s basketball survey in AP history. No team was more in it than Tennessee, with 745 matches. The late Pat Summitt had 618 of them when he was in charge of Lady Vols. The team was disqualified only 14 weeks while she trained. UConn is second on the list, with 554, all subordinate to Geno Auriemma.
According to research historian Mel Greenberg, who started the research in 1976, Kim Mulkey is the active leader with 663 research participations of her time as a player at Louisiana Tech, an assistant coach there and a principal coach for Baylor. Mulkey is second only to former Tennessee player and trainer Holly Warlick for most of all time. Warlick had 693 votes.