There’s growing parity in NCAA women’s basketball. But South Carolina remains on top

Dawn Staley admitted it herself. Years ago, she’d say there were just a few teams in NCAA women’s basketball in serious contention for a national championship — and she would be right.

Since the NCAA women’s basketball tournament was first held in 1982, 15 teams have won the league’s 39 national championships. Two programs, Geno Auriemma’s UConn (11) and Pat Summitt’s Tennessee (8), combine to claim nearly 50% of women’s college basketball national titles.

The Huskies were on a tear when Staley first arrived at South Carolina, with UConn winning six of the NCAA tournaments held from 2009-2016 — Staley’s first eight years in Columbia.

The Gamecocks’ national championship victory in 2017 broke a four-year streak of UConn titles from 2013-16. The next two tournament champions after South Carolina (Notre Dame in 2018 and Baylor in 2019) made up the NCAA’s first four-year span without a repeat winner in that time frame since 2004-07.

“It’s parity,” Staley said when asked about the growth in women’s college basketball competition on Nov. 21. “Great players are going to all different places across the country, and it’s expanding the amount of teams that can win a national championship. I used to say only a few, but there’s more than a few (now).”

As the national landscape of NCAA women’s basketball grows more competitive and the best teams topple each other early, South Carolina has separated itself as the nation’s undisputed leader through the first stretch of the 2021-22 season.

The growing parity in women’s basketball was on full display throughout the first month of play. Associated Press top 10 teams went 54-11 last month, the most losses for top-10 teams in November in two decades, according to ESPN Stats & Information.

Much of the league’s competition is likely the result of competitive non-conference scheduling among its top programs. Fifteen games were played between teams ranked in the AP top 25 in November, and seven games matched up members of the top 10.

Three of November’s top-10 matchups involved No. 1 South Carolina. The Gamecocks won these games by a combined score of 219-177, holding then-No. 5 N.C. State and then-No. 2 UConn to less than 60 points each.

The AP top 10 was rattled through the month of November. Reigning national champion and preseason No. 3 Stanford dropped two contests to teams outside of the top 10 — Texas (which lost to Tennessee) and South Florida (which lost to Tennessee, UConn and UT-Arlington). Preseason No. 7 Baylor lost to preseason No. 4 Maryland, and Maryland lost to N.C. State and Stanford.

Nationally, many of the sport’s top programs appeared quite even through the first month. South Carolina, unanimous AP No. 1 the past three weeks, came out of November with an unblemished record.

The Gamecocks landed at the top of the season’s first NET rankings released Monday and their strength of schedule ranks fourth nationally, according to RealTimeRPI, behind N.C. State, UConn and Washington.

Staley, leading the Gamecocks atop a mountain of quality matchups in NCAA women’s basketball, insists difficult non-conference scheduling early only helps her team in preparing for March. Competitive matchups also grow the game.

“There are a lot of great matchups in women’s basketball in the non-conference, and these are the stories that should be written,” Staley said. “There’s a lot that’s going on in our game, we’ve just gotta push it. We have to make it an agenda to talk about all of these matchups, these players, the coaches and everything that makes women’s basketball great.”

Each of South Carolina’s next three opponents appeared within this week’s AP top 20. Following an exam break, the Gamecocks host No. 8 Maryland on Dec. 12, travel to No. 19 Duke on Dec. 15 and host No. 4 Stanford on Dec. 21. USC opens SEC competition Dec. 30 at Missouri, which received votes in the most recent poll and took No. 5 Baylor to the wire in a 70-68 loss Dec. 4.

South Carolina’s final non-conference game, its annual meeting with UConn, will be played at Colonial Life Arena on Jan. 27. The Gamecocks have already met the Huskies once this season, claiming a 73-57 victory for the Battle 4 Atlantis Tournament championship in Paradise Island, Bahamas on Nov. 22.