#womens-college-basketball

#womens-college-basketball

Lindsay Gottlieb wanted her team to be tested by the best. That's why she put together one of the most grueling schedules in all of college basketball, with four games against teams currently ranked in the top four. But with three of those tests completed, the results haven't exactly been what she - or anyone else - would have hoped.

You're imagining, maybe, that an electric Syla Swords shooting night gave Michigan a 50-point lead at halftime, leaving Oregon head coach Kelly Graves with no choice but to yank his starters and wave the white flag of over-ness. A likely scenario. But Woodward said these words in a tie game with 5.2 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter. This would seem to be one of the least "over" situations ever.

STANFORD After Cal swept Stanford last season for the first time since 1985-86 following the retirement of Cardinal coach Tara VanDerveer, it looked like the title of best women's college basketball team in the Bay Area may be changing hands. But Stanford made a stand Sunday, scoring 12 straight points in the fourth quarter to defeat Cal 78-69 at Maples Pavilion.

The ACC had a tough first month of the 2025-26 women's college basketball season. Duke sits below .500. NC State lost to Rhode Island. Stanford just lost to FGCU. Michigan blitzed Notre Dame by 39 points. Virginia lost to UMBC. Virginia Tech got upset by James Madison. The ACC's list of disappointing results is much longer than a typical November for what is historically the best or second-best conference in the country.

Being at Mississippi State, we had some knock-down-drag-outs with them,

LAS VEGAS -- Jordan Lee scored 19 points and Rori Harmon made a 10-foot floater with a second left to lift No. 4 Texas over No. 2 South Carolina 66-64 on Thursday in the women's title game of the Players Era Championship. Harmon had been held in check by the Gamecocks, having scored just four points until she drove to the left side of the key and pulled up for the winning shot. Harmon also had nine assists to become the program's career leader.

South Carolina guard Ta'Niya Latson drove into the paint in the third quarter. As she went up for the layup, she was met by USC guard Kennedy Smith, who rose up and swatted the ball so hard into the stands that it knocked the hat off a fan sitting a couple rows deep in the Crypto.com Arena crowd. That ended up being the highlight of the Trojans' second half.

"You see in sports things like that happen -- there's just something where you rally around each other," West Virginia coach Mark Kellogg told ESPNU after the game. "I'm so proud of that group of five. I guess it's one of those moments where you don't really know what to say. But that's as good a win as I've probably ever had."

Hidalgo is coming off a season that saw the talented guard become just the fourth sophomore to earn All-America honors in her first two years. USC's JuJu Watkins also accomplished that feat last season, but is out for this year while she's recovering from a torn ACL she suffered in the NCAA Tournament. Courtney Paris and Maya Moore were also All-Americans their first two seasons.

Perhaps this list of potential players of the year for 2025-26 will bring some calm to the chaos, a chance to look at who should be the best performers in each conference. Some seem easy to call -- there don't appear to be any true challengers to UConn's Sarah Strong in the Big East or Richmond's Maggie Doogan in the Atlantic 10 -- but other races like the SEC and Big 12 should be tight until the final day of the campaign.

As much as February and March get most of the attention, NCAA tournament résumés begin their construction the moment the college basketball season begins. November and December matter. They matter plenty. Those are the games that shape the narrative for the rest of the season and are referenced when the selection committee is making many of its most difficult decisions.

Hopefully it's a little bit of a confidence builder and not, 'Oh my God!'