Best women's programs during poll era? UConn, Tennessee head all-time Top 25 with some surprises

"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."

"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)."

UConn leads with 12 national championships and occupies the top spot in the AP all-time Top 25, with Tennessee second at eight titles. Stanford, Louisiana Tech and Baylor round out the top five. The AP used data from nearly 900 weekly polls across 50 years to create a formula weighting poll appearances and average rankings. Tennessee has the most poll appearances (802), followed by Texas (651) and UConn (647). By average ranking alone, UConn, Louisiana Tech and Wayland Baptist would be the top three. All 161 programs that have ever appeared in the poll were included in the calculations.

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