RALEIGH, N.C. — Three North Carolina programs begin the women’s college basketball season ranked, led by a Duke team that holds its loftiest preseason position in more than a decade.
The Blue Devils are No. 4 in the preseason Top 25 released Tuesday by a 31-member national media panel. It is Duke’s best preseason ranking since 2013, when the Blue Devils opened at No. 2 and went on to finish 27-6. The last time Duke started a season at No. 4 was 1999, the year the program reached its first national championship game.
North Carolina checks in at No. 12, one spot behind defending national champion UCLA. NC State grabbed the last spot in the rankings at No. 25.
South Carolina is the preseason No. 1, collecting 23 of the first-place votes. UConn is second with six first-place votes and has now cracked the preseason top 10 every year dating to 1994, and Southern California, which welcomes back a healthy JuJu Watkins, is third with the remaining two. Michigan rounds out the top five, the highest preseason ranking in Wolverines history.
Duke will not have to wait long for a measuring stick. The Gamecocks face five ranked opponents in the opening month, and the Blue Devils are among them along with UConn and USC.
The Big Ten placed nine teams in the poll, the most of any league, while the SEC landed seven. The ACC’s three North Carolina schools give the state one of the deeper groups of ranked teams anywhere in the country.
Regular-season play begins in early November, and the rankings will be updated every week through the season, giving all three in-state teams early chances to move up.
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