UConn Caps a Perfect Regular Season: Women’s College Basketball AP Top 25 Breakdown

Watching UConn finish a perfect regular season never gets old. Love them or hate them, Geno Auriemma’s Huskies have a way of making the rest of women’s college basketball feel like it’s fighting over second place. And right now? That’s exactly what’s happening.

The final AP Top 25 of the regular season dropped Monday, and while UConn sat comfortably on the throne at 31-0 with all 31 first-place votes, there was plenty of drama unfolding below them. Conference tournament week is here, Selection Sunday is March 15, and the bubble is about to get very uncomfortable for some teams.

UConn Is Still Unbeatable

Forty-seven consecutive wins. An 11th undefeated Big East season. A 2025 national championship already on the résumé. The Huskies are not just playing good basketball — they’re playing a different sport than most teams right now.

For Auriemma personally, this run with UConn has cemented yet another milestone. He recently passed Tara VanDerveer for the most appearances by a coach in the AP Top 25. That’s not a small footnote. That’s a career’s worth of excellence stacked on top of more excellence.

UCLA held firm at No. 2 after doing something nobody had done in over a decade — finishing with a perfect Big Ten regular season. The last team to pull that off was Maryland back in 2014-15. The Bruins are locked in and playing like a team that genuinely believes they can challenge UConn when it matters most.

North Carolina Makes the Biggest Jump Of the Week

Here’s the storyline that deserves more attention: North Carolina climbed five spots to No. 16 after knocking off rival Duke on Sunday. Two words apparently changed this team’s season: “It’s us.” That phrase became a rallying cry, and the Tar Heels have now won 12 of their last 13 games.

That’s not a slump-busting fluke. That’s a team finding itself at exactly the right moment. If the NCAA Tournament selection committee puts North Carolina in a position to host the first weekend of March Madness, good luck to whoever draws them in that bracket.

The ACC Had a Wild Weekend

While Carolina was riding high, Louisville was getting humbled. An unranked Notre Dame team, led by a Hannah Hidalgo steal so clutch it should come with its own highlight reel, showed the Cardinals exactly what March desperation looks like. Louisville slipped out of the top 10 as a result, dropping to No. 12.

Taking their vacated top-10 spot? TCU. The Horned Frogs won their second straight Big 12 title and moved up to No. 10 in the AP poll. They did it partly by holding Baylor to just 15 points in the first half — the Bears’ lowest-scoring opening half since 2010. Baylor is down to No. 20, and that free fall has to sting.

South Carolina Survives a Scare

No. 3 South Carolina had the college basketball world holding its breath for a moment. Kentucky came to play and nearly pulled off the upset, but Dawn Staley’s Gamecocks held on to protect their ranking. Surviving close calls in late February is actually good tournament preparation. You want your team to know what it feels like to be uncomfortable before the bracket comes out.

The Gamecocks are 29-2 and still one of the most dangerous teams in the country. A bad day against Kentucky was just that — a bad day. They’ll be fine.

Ole Miss Is Fading Fast

The SEC had its own casualty this week. Ole Miss fell five spots to No. 24 after losing six of its last eight games. The most recent stumble was a 66-58 loss to Texas A&M — a bubble team playing with the kind of urgency that Ole Miss hasn’t shown lately. Momentum matters in March, and the Rebels are running low on it.

What To Watch As Conference Tournaments Begin

Conference tournament week is where reputations get made — and brackets get blown up. A few things worth tracking:

• Can anyone slow down UConn in the Big East? Almost certainly not, but someone will try.
• Will North Carolina’s momentum carry into the ACC Tournament? Their Duke win was statement enough. A deep ACC run would all but guarantee them a top seed.
• Who survives on the bubble? Texas A&M is playing like a team that wants it badly. Notre Dame, riding that Hidalgo steal into the postseason, could be trouble for anyone.

Selection Sunday arrives on March 15. Between now and then, conference tournaments will flip the script on at least a handful of these teams. That’s the beauty of this time of year. The rankings tell you where things stand, but the games tell you everything else.