Which women's college basketball programs could soon rival the bluebloods of the sport?

New York Times

12-02-2025

UConn, Tennessee and Stanford have reigned supreme over women's college basketball for decades as the bluebloods of women's college basketball. But the game and the dominant forces within it are starting to evolve.
Despite sitting top of the Big East, UConn has not won a national championship since 2016, Tennessee is middle of the pack in the SEC and still finding its feet under coach Kim Caldwell, while Stanford is treading water near the bottom of the ACC at 11-12.
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On the latest episode of 'The Athletic Women's Basketball Show,' Zena Keita, Chantel Jennings and Ben Pickman looked at the schools that could potentially catch — and even usurp – these storied programs in the years to come.
A partial transcript has been edited for clarity and length. The full episode is available on 'The Athletic Women's Basketball Show' feed on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Zena: As we think about these three teams; Stanford, Tennessee and UConn, these bluebloods that have dominated women's college basketball for so long. It is true that you can't pencil them in, in the same way you can't guarantee that they're going to get the best class. You can't guarantee that they're going to win the high-profile, big-time matchups that are on the national stages. There are too many other schools that are in that conversation now – South Carolina obviously being one of them. I want to ask both of you: What are your thoughts on how long you have to have sustained excellence to be a part of this blueblood, true blood, kind of conversation. Is it a decade? Is it multiple decades? What do you guys think?
Chantel: I think it depends when you're talking about it because right now you look across the country and you're like, who are these programs? South Carolina is sort of in that class to me right now. They've been to six Final Fours since 2015. They've won three national titles in that time, so they're batting .500 in getting to the Final Four and winning a national title. Not bad. Could they lose in the Elite Eight? Have they shown this isn't the undefeated team of last season? But everything they've shown makes me feel like they have a path to the Final Four again this year and they have a potential path to the national championship. I think there's a lot of teams in that conversation though, more than ever maybe. But I think a few more years of this with South Carolina, they have three national championships to Tennessee's eight and to UConn's 11. But Stanford has three, as many national titles since 2015 as Stanford has in its history. So I think, in this moment, it sort of feels like the tail of South Carolina's history is not as long as Stanford, Tennessee or UConn's. However I think 20 years from now, when we look back at this era and think of blue bloods in terms of what were the programs that were setting the bar, that were defining what it means to be elite in women's basketball? South Carolina is sort of in that group right now for me.
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Zena: What about you, Ben?
Ben: Yeah, I agree with that. They are definitely in that group. One of the schools that is really interesting to me in this conversation is Notre Dame. Niele Ivey is still just kind of getting settled in compared to some of the other coaches we've talked about, the Pat Summitts to the Geno Auriemmas. This is only her fifth year as the head coach of Notre Dame. But Notre Dame is really interesting because like under Muffet McGraw, especially over her final decade with the program, they would just make the national final year after year … and obviously winning in 2017-2018. What is so interesting about what's going on now is it seems like if Niele Ivey is going to be the coach not only of the present but of the future. So you're kind of building a lineage with not only one coach. You have Muffet who takes over in the late 1980s and stays all the way until just a couple of years ago. But you might now also have another coach who is the figurehead of a program.
And when we think about these bluebloods, these staple programs in both the men's and the women's side, so often it's because of a coach that has been there for two or three decades. By no means am I saying that Niele Ivey needs to just pencil herself into living in South Bend for the next two or three decades, right? But I think they are a really interesting potential example of a program that could be next. Let them make a Final Four first under Niele Ivey before we pencil them in for the next dynasty of college basketball. But it's rare, especially on the women's side, for us to have these transitions from one coach to the next, or one legacy coach to the next. As we talked about with Tennessee, and as we kind of talked about with Stanford, Notre Dame isn't going through that lull right now. If they can sustain this and make Final Fours and do this for years to come, they are a really different kind of example of how a blueblood emerges because it's not just one coach, it's with two.
You can listen to full episodes of The Athletic Women's Basketball Show for free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
(Top Photo: C. Morgan Engel/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)