South Carolina women's basketball: Ten consecutive years in the AP Poll

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When the AP Poll comes out Monday, South Carolina will once again sit atop the rankings. It will mark 193 consecutive weeks in the AP Poll, a stretch that dates back almost exactly 10 years, to December 10, 2012.

Being ranked is so commonplace for the Gamecocks now that we barely talk about it. There’s a story about the preseason rankings (and for the last three preseasons it has been no. 1). And then little else. That’s what happens when the expectations are Final Fours and championships.

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Before 2012

South Carolina was a top-five team in the early 1980s when Pam Parsons was coaching Sheila Foster, but that success didn’t last. The Gamecocks were occasionally ranked throughout that decade and were ranked at the end of the 1989-90 season and the beginning of the 1990-91 season.

But South Carolina essentially went through the 90s unranked, going almost ten years out of the AP Poll before Susan Walvius cracked the rankings early in the 2001-02 season. That team eventually rose to the top ten and made an Elite Eight run. 

The next season South Carolina spent most of the year ranked. But then the Gamecocks bottomed out in 2003-04 and it would be almost another decade until Dawn Staley got them back in the top 25.

In 2011-12, South Carolina was ranked six non-consecutive times, all 24th or 25th. Despite earning a five seed in the NCAA tournament and making the Sweet 16, South Carolina was unranked entering the 2012-13 season.

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Earning a ranking

South Carolina started the 2012-13 season 10-0 but had yet to crack the top 25. 

The Gamecocks were caught in a middle ground that made them easy for voters to ignore. Ranked teams didn’t want to risk losing to the unranked Gamecocks, who were unranked because they couldn’t get top teams to play them.

So South Carolina played who it could, beating a bunch of mid- or small-majors and Clemson. When the teams ranked 22nd, 24th, and 25th all lost, South Carolina crept in at 24 following a 69-35 win over Furman. 

While South Carolina was off for ten days, two more teams lost and dropped out, allowing the Gamecocks to climb to 21st before their game against top-ranked Stanford.

Predictably, South Carolina lost. But the Gamecocks fought hard and the final score was 53-49. Instead of dropping, the Gamecocks actually rose in the next poll, to 19th.

It validated what many around the program had believed: name recognition, not the quality of the team, was what had kept South Carolina out of the top 25. (The SEC Network was still months away from being announced and nearly two years from debuting, so only marquee games were televised.)

South Carolina climbed as high as 14th and finished the season 17th. They started the next season 22nd, climbed into the top five, and the dynasty as we now know it was born.

When asked about that first ranking ten years ago, Staley admitted she had no memory of it. But she was quick to credit that team for all the success that has followed.

“It’s cool,” Staley said. “You have to attribute that to the players you bring into your program. The cornerstone of our program revolves around local players who came here, that believed we could be who we are today well before we are who we are today. I’m talking South Carolinians, I’m talking about North Carolinians, those are the states from which we’ve drawn some great players who believed in it. We must not forget where we got our start from.”

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Close call

Since that Stanford game, South Carolina only came close to dropping out of the AP Poll once. South Carolina started the 2018-19 season ranked 10th, but went 5-4 with blowout losses to Maryland and Baylor.

The Gamecocks had fallen to 25th when they played at Purdue. The Boilermakers led by seven near the end of regulation and three with two seconds left in the first overtime (thanks in part to a technical foul on Staley). But somehow the Gamecocks came back to win in double-overtime.

Easy games against Temple and Furman followed, and by the New Year, South Carolina was back climbing the rankings. Staley didn’t remember the close call either but said it made sense it happened during the dysfunctional 2018-19 season.

“I remember a whole lot of 2018,” she said. “I’m not surprised at that.”

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Different expectations

Staley has never cared much about the poll. She prefers to measure her program by how the Gamecocks compete against opponents and the championships they win.

That’s easy to do when you are competing for national championships every season. It doesn’t mean South Carolina isn’t in the midst of a remarkable streak. 

The Gamecocks have been ranked in the top ten of every poll since the beginning of the 2019-20 season. They have held the number one ranking 50 times, including the last 25 weeks in a row.

That is the fourth-most all-time, behind UConn, Tennessee, and Louisiana Tech. What makes it even more impressive is that all 50 have come in the last eight seasons.

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