Women's College Basketball Top 10, Bubble Team NET Rankings: MSU Drops, UMD Rises
The top 25 rankings are important for understanding just who is killing it in college basketball, but we can go deeper — all the way to the bubble and beyond.
The NCAA Evaluation Tool, or NET, is a rankings system used in Division I basketball to help figure out which teams are going to participate in March Madness. As the NCAA puts it, NET "takes into account game results, strength of schedule, game location, net offensive and defensive efficiency, and the quality of wins and losses," the latter of which is determined by placing every Division I matchup into different quadrants, ranked 1 through 4, with 1 being the strongest teams and 4 the weakest — Quads aren’t just determined by record, but also whether a game was played at home, on the road or at a neutral site.
Using NET, we can get a sense of which teams are the best at a given moment, as well as which ones are on the bubble for selection in March. While updated daily by the NCAA, we’ll track changes weekly.
With that, here are the top 10 women’s college basketball teams through Dec. 29, according to NET.
The Top 10
10. Iowa (previous: 12)
Iowa enters the top 10 after sitting outside of it for a couple of weeks, thanks to a dominant 99-76 win over bubble team Penn State. The Hawkeyes replaced last week’s 10th-ranked team, Michigan State, as the Spartans fell to 11th in NET after defeating Rutgers (121st in NET) by just 6 points on Sunday. And what of the previous 11th-ranked team? Nebraska lost to USC on Monday, which bumped them to 15th.
9. TCU (previous: 9)
TCU wasn’t in action, and didn’t move in the rankings, either. Not bad work if you can get it.
8. Kentucky (previous: 7)
Kentucky crushed Hofstra, 80-42, but that’s also exactly what the Wildcats were supposed to do with a bottom-tier team, so no bonus points there. Kentucky is in an interesting spot, as they have a plethora of road games and wins — it’s 5-0 there so far — but just two Quad 1 matchups.
7. Maryland (previous: 10)
Maryland leapt from 10th to 7th after routing Wisconsin in its opening Big Ten matchup, 97-59. The Terrapins are 14-0 as they begin conference season in earnest, with upcoming games against Illinois, Indiana, Rutgers, and then four-consecutive ranked games against Ohio State, USC, UCLA and Iowa.
Maryland battled in their first Big Ten matchup, but there are many more to come. (Photo by Greg Fiume/Getty Images)
6. Michigan (previous: 6)
Oregon isn’t ranked, but NET does think highly of them, which is why Michigan wasn’t punished at all in the rankings for taking two overtimes to defeat them on Monday.
5. LSU (previous: 5)
Don’t worry, LSU managed to sneak one more Quad 4 beatdown in before the new year and conference season. Their schedule turns extremely serious as the calendar flips, though: they have faced a single Quad 1 team, and no ranked ones, to this point, but four of their next five are coming against top-25 teams, and their schedule doesn’t slow up much from there, either.
4. UCLA (previous: 4)
You might be surprised about UCLA sticking in 4th after beating ranked Ohio State on Sunday, but the issue here is that the poll likes the Buckeyes — which it has at No. 19 — much more than NET does: the Buckeyes are 31st there, and actually moved up because of keeping it close with the Bruins.
3. Texas (previous: 3)
The Longhorns obliterated Southeastern Louisiana over the weekend, but they are one of the 30-worst teams in NET, so that wasn’t enough to push them past a resurgent South Carolina.
2. South Carolina (previous: 2)
Part of the reason for that is that the Gamecocks had their own massive blowout of an opponent in the past week — a 105-43 win against Florida Gulf Coast — except the Eagles sit about halfway down the NET rankings instead of at the bottom. Texas is chasing, but South Carolina is moving a little faster of late.
1. UConn (previous: 1)
In its lone matchup of the week, a 94-47 dub, UConn scored more points off turnovers against Big East opponent Butler than the Bulldogs had points in total, and that was with the Huskies sitting their starters for the fourth quarter. UConn remains in first because of play like that, but also because its average opponent NET ranking is 95: the Huskies have played the seventh-toughest schedule of anyone in women’s Division I basketball thus far, but you wouldn’t know it from the results.
Risers and Fallers
In the span of a week, some teams can see their spot in the rankings dramatically shift. Here are the five teams that rose the most in women’s college basketball in the last week…
T5. Illinois State, 143 to 125: Illinois State walloped Indiana State, 105-64, and that was enough for a sizable push in NET.
T5. Alcorn, 332 to 314: A fun thing about being near the bottom of the rankings is that, if that team loses to an upper-tier one by just 20 points as Alcorn did against Ole Miss, then there are rewards for keeping it close. Ole Miss, by the way, dropped from 22nd in NET to 29th in the past week. You know, because it only beat Alcorn by 20.
4. California Baptist, 174 to 154: The Lancers beat Utah Valley, 82-51, putting some serious distance between the two of them in the NET rankings in the process.
3. Binghamton, 188 to 163: Binghamton got here thanks to winning on Monday, but then it also played Tuesday and already lost before this sentence was written. Their opponent, Penn, ranked 111th in NET before the matchup, so Binghamton shouldn’t be hit too hard, but enough to offset this sizable gain.
2. Rutgers, 148 to 121: Rutgers lost by just 6 points to Michigan State, which was great for them, but as you already read, not great for Michigan State.
Losing isn't the end of the world for NET, so long as it's against the right team in the right conditions. (Photo by Dan Squicciarini/NurPhoto via Getty Images).
1. Drake, 239 to 211: A 78-62 win on the road against UIC gave Drake the most significant jump in NET of anyone in the past week. While Drake is just 3-9 on the season, all three victories have come in away games.
…and the five that fell the furthest.
5. Robert Morris, 201 to 219: Oakland moved up in NET nearly as much as Robert Morris fell back after a 61-58 win for the Grizzlies.
4. Fairleigh Dickinson, 149 to 169: The other side of Binghamton moving up with a W was FDU moving down with an L.
3. Utah Valley, 181 to 202: Utah Valley is 5-5 on the season, but it’s been tough lately: it defeated a D-II team on Dec. 16, then lost 59-56 to Idaho State before getting rocked by Cal Baptist, 82-51 on Monday. Just the last of those count for our purposes in the past week, but it shows you the recent trajectory.
2. UIC, 202 to 224: Losing at home to Drake did not do UIC any favors.
1. Purdue Fort Wayne, 115 to 138: This is a tough one for Purdue Fort Wayne. It played just one game in the past week, and lost it in overtime to Northern Kentucky by a mere 3 points. The problem is that Northern Kentucky was 110 spots behind Purdue Fort Wayne in NET. Emphasis on "was."
On the Bubble
Of the 68 March Madness teams in the tournament, 31 of them are conference champions who receive automatic entry into the tournament. The other 37 spots are at-large bids. With that in mind, we will look at the teams ranked between 64-to-73 in NET each week, as those are the ones who are the most on the bubble for the tourney.
73. South Florida (previous: 78): South Florida wasn’t in action in the past week, but it will face Rice (81st in NET) on Tuesday, which should have significant implications for both as far as the bubble goes.
72. UC Irvine (previous: 73): The Anteaters didn’t play, either, and have not since Dec. 18. They return to the court on Jan. 1 against Cal State Bakersfield.
71. Penn State (previous: 72): Penn State moved up a single spot as a result of losing to Iowa: it was a loss, yeah, but NET sees Iowa as the 10th-best team, so the Nittany Lions weren’t penalized for the defeat because of that and thanks to it being a road game. Matchups don’t come much more Quad 1 than that.
Against Iowa, on the road? That's a justifiable loss for Penn State. (Photo by Keith Gillett/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
70. Colorado (previous: 71): Colorado concludes their 2025 on Wednesday against Arizona — it’s been off since Dec. 21.
69. George Mason (previous: 67): George Mason did not play in the last week, either, but it takes on Dayton (197) on Wednesday. Remember: women’s D-I basketball shut down earlier than the men’s side did for the break, so there’s a lot of this going around.
68. Kansas State (previous: 69): K-State will attempt to recover from their most recent defeat against TCU on Wednesday, when it takes on Cincinnati at home.
67. Troy (previous: 66): Troy remains off until the new year, and will face Louisiana (319 in NET) when it comes.
66. Marquette (previous: 57): Losing to UConn in Big East play, even by 36 points, was understandable. Losing to St. John’s is a little tougher to justify, and as such NET punted the Golden Eagles back into the bubble.
65. Auburn (previous: 64): Auburn, like Marquette, actually was in action in the past week, but unlike the Golden Eagles the Tigers won. Against the Jackson State Tigers, to be precise, 64-48. Moving back a single spot was a very gentle "you should have won by more" nudge from NET.
64. Florida (previous: 62): By the same token, Florida fell back a couple of spots because it defeated Furman (297th in NET at the time) by 24 points instead of something far more dominant. That might sound like nitpicking, but Furman moved up 12 spots because of losing by that amount on the road.
63. California (previous: 63): Observe: a 91-50 dub for California over Cal Poly — one of the 10 lowest-ranked teams in Division I — is what is required to not lose your ground in the bubble. A drubbing, yes, but these should be drubbings.
Want great stories delivered right to your inbox? Create or log in to your FOX Sports account, and follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized newsletter daily!
