South Carolina Locked In at No. 4 — But the Ballot Details Tell a More Interesting Story
The headline is straightforward: South Carolina sits at No. 4 in the latest AP Poll, and all 31 voters placed the Gamecocks inside their top four. That’s the floor of where this program operates now. But dig into the individual ballots, and a more nuanced — and somewhat controversial — picture emerges.
The Consensus and Its One Exception
UConn and UCLA appeared ahead of South Carolina on all 31 ballots. Texas appeared ahead on 30 of 31. That near-unanimity makes sense given Sunday’s SEC Tournament Championship result — Texas beat South Carolina decisively, and voters rewarded the Longhorns accordingly.
Thirty voters placed South Carolina at No. 4. One voter — Marisa Ingemi of the San Francisco Chronicle — placed the Gamecocks at No. 3, ranking Texas sixth behind both South Carolina and Vanderbilt in the SEC. That’s a ballot that defies the obvious logic of a head-to-head championship result and one that Ingemi has precedent for, having drawn criticism for unconventional ballots earlier this season.
The outlier vote is worth examining beyond the criticism it will inevitably attract. South Carolina won the SEC regular season title by two games over Texas and Vanderbilt, and by three over LSU. In a pure resume-based evaluation — absent Sunday’s result — there’s an argument for the Gamecocks sitting ahead of Texas. Tournament championships carry weight, but they’re a three-game sample. Thirty-one games of regular season dominance isn’t nothing.
Most voters disagree with that framing, and that’s reasonable. But Ingemi’s ballot isn’t indefensible on its face — it’s just a minority position in a voting body that appropriately weights recent results.
A Statistical Rarity Hidden Inside the Rankings
Buried beneath the polling details is a number that deserves more attention. The 2025-26 season marks the first time since 2018-19 that South Carolina has not reached No. 1 in the AP Poll. That’s a seven-year run of ascending to the top spot — annual — that quietly defines just how dominant this program has been under Dawn Staley.
Furthermore, South Carolina has not been ranked outside the top seven since the preseason poll ahead of the 2019-20 season. That season ended without an NCAA Tournament due to COVID-19, but the Gamecocks were the No. 1 team in the country when the season was canceled.
These aren’t footnotes. They are the statistical backbone of one of the most sustained excellence runs in the history of women’s college basketball. The absence of a No. 1 ranking this year doesn’t signal decline — it signals that the competition at the top has genuinely elevated, with UConn, UCLA, and now Texas all presenting legitimate cases for the summit.
Historical Context Heading Into March
The last time South Carolina lost its first SEC Tournament game — the 2021-22 season — the Gamecocks came back and won the national championship. Staley referenced that precedent directly in her postgame press conference, and the AP voters, consciously or not, seem to have factored in the same historical pattern. Dropping only one spot despite a 17-point championship loss reflects respect for what this program does when March arrives.
South Carolina enters Selection Sunday at 32-3, as a projected No. 1 seed, headlining what is expected to be the Sacramento regional. The ballot debates will settle themselves on the court. They always do with this program.
