Stanford Coach Tara VanDerveer Sets Women’s Top 25 Record

The Cardinal remained No. 2 behind top-ranked South Carolina on Monday, giving VanDerveer 619 weeks with one of her teams in the AP Top 25.

Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer stands atop The Associated Press women’s basketball poll with the most appearances all time, breaking a tie with the late Pat Summitt.

VanDerveer’s Cardinal remained No. 2 behind top-ranked South Carolina on Monday, giving her 619 weeks with one of her teams in the AP Top 25: 592 weeks with Stanford and 27 with Ohio State when she was in charge of that program. Summitt’s 618 weeks in the poll all came with Tennessee.

The Hall of Fame coach downplayed the achievement.

“Fortunate to be here for 36 years. We have great players and have been successful,” VanDerveer said. “I don’t pay attention to (records). People bring it up and I’m like ‘OK, great.’”

Marco Garcia/Associated Press

Louisville fell out of the Top 25 for the first time since 2016, a span of 127 weeks. That was the fifth longest active streak. The Cardinals (5-4) started the season ranked seventh and have struggled to find consistency this year, dropping their last two games to Ohio State and Middle Tennessee.

They are the third preseason top 10 team to fall out of the poll, joining Texas (this week) and Tennessee (last week). Before this year, only 10 preseason top 10 teams had fallen out of the rankings at some point during the year since the AP Top 25 became a writers’ poll in 1994-95.

Even more rare has been a preseason top five school dropping out. Only five teams had done that prior to this year and none before January. Tennessee was the last to do it, starting the 2015-16 season at No. 4 before falling out of the rankings Feb. 22.

Now Texas and Tennessee are both out before the New Year.

“Two factors are at play here. One of them is more parity with more good teams,” said Rebecca Lobo, the former UConn star, ESPN analyst and Top 25 voter. “The other factor at play is the transfer portal. I think those three teams all have multiple players who start who weren’t in their program a year ago. It’s a reflection that you can’t just assemble teams and right away expect them to be good. I think all those teams will in the poll by the end of the season.”

Ohio State moved up to No. 3 after, the Buckeyes’ best ranking since Nov. 30, 2009, when they also were third. Indiana and Notre Dame round out the top five.

UConn fell three spots to sixth with Virginia Tech seventh, the best ranking ever for the school. North Carolina and N.C. State were tied in eighth and Iowa State is 10th.

Women’s AP top 25 as of Dec. 5:

1. South Carolina
2. Stanford
3. Ohio State
4. Indiana
5. Notre Dame
6. UConn
7. Virginia Tech
8. North Carolina
9. NC State
10. Iowa State
11. LSU
12. Arizona
13. UCLA
14. Michigan
15. Utah
16. Iowa
17. Oregon
18. Creighton
19. Baylor
20. Maryland
21. Arkansas
22. Gonzaga
23. Oklahoma
24. Kansas State
25. Villanova

Others receiving votes: Kansas 37, Marquette 30, Louisville 28, Texas 17, St. John’s 14, South Florida 12, Miami (FL) 12, Virginia 8, Duke 5, Florida State 4, Rice 4, Purdue 3, Nebraska 2, Missouri 2, Seton Hall 1, Middle Tennessee 1.