Skylar Diggins has been hired as special advisor to Niele Ivey & will help mentor players off the court!

bootleg game thread
broadcasted on B1G+

Got to attend this. UNC really missed Toomey on the boards. Harpring looks like she will easily be the best freshman Banghart has had.

Dawn gets another birdie!

Been covering Jordyn since since she was in 8th grade and thought the sub might appreciate a more in-depth article on the newest Gamecock commit.

The open circle is each team's preseason rank, and the filled dot is where it finished in last season's final poll, released after the title game.

Biggest slide: UCLA won the title and finished No. 1. It opens at No. 11. Virginia fell about as far, from No. 19 to out of the poll.

Biggest climb: USC goes from unranked to No. 3. Washington jumps from No. 25 to 16.

New to the poll: USC, Oklahoma State, Illinois and NC State.

Dropped out: Virginia, Michigan State, Baylor and Alabama.

Who's ranked too high, or too low?

The game is at 7pm CT.

Edit: The game is on SECN+.

For the better part of two decades, Illinois women's basketball was basically a doormat in the Big Ten. Outside of some really successful years under Theresa Grentz in the late 1990s, the program spent much of the 2000s and 2010s struggling to stay competitive, let alone earn national recognition. By the time Shauna Green arrived in 2022, Illinois hadn't made the NCAA Tournament since 2003 and was coming off a miserable 7–20 season with just one conference victory. What she's accomplished since then is pretty remarkable. Illinois has put together four consecutive winning seasons, made three NCAA Tournament appearances, won the 2024 WBIT championship, and become a nationally ranked program again. Now they're entering the 2026–27 season ranked No. 23 in the country. For a program that spent so many years near the bottom of the Big Ten, that's an enormous achievement. Green hasn't just made Illinois respectable again; she's completely changed the expectations surrounding women's basketball in Champaign Illinois.

#1 South Carolina 15

#2 UConn 9

#3 USC 12

#4 Duke 10

#5 Michigan 10

#6 Texas 11

#7 Louisville 8

#8 Vanderbilt 8

#9 LSU 9

#10 Iowa 10

#11 UCLA 13

#12 UNC 7

#13 Notre Dame 10

#14 UK 8

#15 TCU 4

#16 Washington 9

#17 Minnesota 8

#18 Ohio State 12

#19 Ole Miss 8

#20 Maryland 11

#21 Oklahoma 11

#22 Oklahoma State 5

#23 Illinois 8

#24 West Virgina 4

#25 NCSU 7

So excited to see the ladies play in person for the first time in decades!

You can watch on UCONN+

https://uconnhuskies.com/watch/live

The game is on B1G+ at 6 pm EST.

Bodes well for Hawk fans! This is gonna be an exciting season.

Here is my first cut of NCAA WBB roster data as of October 6, for as many teams in all three divisions as were available. You can search, browse and filter by name, team or other details and see some maps and charts:

https://sports-roster-data.github.io/womens-college-basketball/

All of the data is available for download as CSV files, too, and I'll be updating it through the first few weeks of the season. Comments and suggestions welcomed!