Women's College Basketball

Women's College Basketball Top 10, Bubble Team NET Rankings: Texas Chases UConn

Published Dec. 16, 2025 4:50 p.m. ET

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. 15, according to NET.

The Top 10

10. Michigan State (previous: 10)

Michigan State is playing great, but they haven’t played a single Quad 1 team yet, and are 1-1 against Quad 2 opponents. Of the top 10 teams in NET, they have had the second-weakest schedule.

9. Maryland (previous: 11)

Maryland is one of two undefeated teams with 12 wins, but they have played the vast majority of their games at home, and just a pair of Quad 1 matchups. Still, this is a jump into the top 10, as they were out of it a week ago.

8. TCU (previous: 8)

TCU is an undefeated 11-0, but nine of those wins have come against Quad 4 teams, and the Horned Frogs have just the one road game so far.

7. Kentucky (previous: 7)

Kentucky played just one game in the last week — a win against current 84th-ranked Belmont — and that helped them keep their place in line despite having just two Quad 1 matchups so far, one of which they lost.

6. South Carolina (previous: 5)

South Carolina falling to sixth is less of an indictment of the Gamecocks and more about how absolutely stacked the top of the women’s rankings are this season. They took down Penn State, a bubble team, and still fell back a spot.

5. LSU (previous: 2)

LSU dominated the rankings early on, but as the rest of this top layer of teams piles up wins against top-level competition, the Tigers are sliding backwards. They’re elite as well, but they are also 11 games into their season with a single Quad 1 opponent behind them.

4. Michigan (previous: 3)

Compare that with Michigan. The average NET ranking of LSU’s opponents is 305: first, that is out of 363, and second, Michigan’s opponents thus far have come out to 136. So, despite playing just one more Quad 1 opponent — and losing — Michigan comes out ahead at this point.

3. UCLA (previous: 4)

UCLA has had a tougher schedule than anyone else: the average NET ranking of their opponents is 56, tops in Division I women’s basketball, and this despite not having a single road game yet: UCLA has had six neutral-site matchups, and lost just the one… to the next team on the list.

2. Texas (previous: 6)

The quality of competition that Texas has faced is something else in terms of names, but they have balanced out having to face UCLA and South Carolina and two other Quad 1 teams in the early going with six matchups against Quad 4 squads, and a single Quad 3 one. By average NET ranking, UCLA, Michigan, and South Carolina have all had a tougher go of it so far… but two of those three also faced — and lost to — Texas.

1. UConn (previous: 1)

The other top-10 school that has had a tougher schedule than Texas so far, by NET’s reckoning? That’s UConn, which after dominating USC on the road over the weekend is 10-0 with a trio of wins against both Quad 1 and Quad 2 opponents, as well as on the road.

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 men’s college basketball in the last week…

5. Maine, 228 to 194: Senior forward Adrianna Smith is back from the knee injury that cost her last season, and America East’s leader in points, rebounds and minutes per game helped the Black Bears avoid being blown out by Fairfield (40th in NET) and defeat Quinnipiac (previously 85th) with double-doubles in back-to-back games.

4. Akron, 311 to 276: By not getting completely destroyed by Michigan — just the normal amount — Akron made moves in the rankings.

3. Dartmouth, 241 to 195: After a buzzer-beater heartbreaker at home against Merrimack to kick off December, Dartmouth has rattled off four wins in a row.

2. San Diego State, 152 to 105: The Aztecs took down Kansas State since last week, which in turn cut the gap between the two in NET considerably.

1. Northwestern State, 209 to 157: Northwestern State defeated McNeese, 65-58, which pushed them up a leading 52 spots in the rankings and dropped McNeese from around the bubble at 78 to outside of it at 92.

…and the five that fell the furthest.

T4: Indiana State, 222 to 256: The Sycamores let Butler cross the century mark in a 101-56 beatdown.

T4: California Baptist, 125 to 159: Losses to UC Irvine and UC San Diego sent California Baptist sliding.

3. UTEP, 171 to 206: The Miners lost to BYU, 81-46, which didn’t move the needle much for the Cougars but was devastating to UTEP.

2. Eastern Kentucky, 133 to 182: Losing to Arizona (ranked 182 at the time) and Marshall (ranked 112) in a week wasn’t great for Eastern Kentucky, but it did help the Wildcats jump up quite a few spots.

1. Florida Atlantic, 181 to 232: Florida Atlantic lost to Florida Gulf Coast University and Florida International in the space of a week, and now they are ranked behind both of them.

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. Penn State (previous: 68): A loss to South Carolina might be a loss to a great team — one of the best, even — but it’s still a loss, and they also dropped their previous game to Arizona State.

72. Kansas State (previous: 59): K-State crushed MS Valley, 108-49, then defeated a respectable Creighton squad, 83-76. That wasn’t by nearly enough, though, as the Bluejays jumping up eight spots in NET despite losing implied, while Kansas State slipped back even further.

71. South Florida (previous: 65): South Florida is better than their record, as they have played in four Quad 1 games and lost all of them, but they are also going to probably have to win one at some point — or at least a bunch of Quad 2 games — to avoid missing out on March.

70. George Mason (previous: 69): George Mason didn’t play in the last week, but they will resume competition on Dec. 20 against No. 25 Princeton.

69. Harvard (previous: 61): Harvard also didn’t play in the past week, and will next play Maine on Dec. 21.

68. California (previous: 63): California defeated Idaho before losing to Stanford, which had them ping ponging a little.

67. UMass Amherst (previous: 62): Not playing is a negative as far as NET is concerned, just because other teams can add to their résumés while you sit.

66. Columbia (previous: 74): Columbia had one game against the higher-ranked Seton Hall, on the road, and won by a single point.

65. Kansas (previous: 73): Crushing Denver 77-38 helped bump Kansas from the back-end of these bubble rankings a week ago.

64. Auburn (previous: 60): A loss to Seton Hall dropped Auburn back just a little bit into the bubble zone.

MORE COLLEGE HOOPS: Latest Men’s College Basketball Top 10, Bubble Team NET Rankings

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