Lady Vols basketball dropped one spot in the Associated Press poll after losing a second straight game last week.
Tennessee (15-4, 3-4 SEC) is ranked No. 18 in the AP poll after losing 80-76 to No. 7 Texas on the road. The Lady Vols were ranked No. 17 in both the USA TODAY coaches poll and AP Top 25 last week after their one-point road loss at Vanderbilt.
Tennessee returns to Knoxville to host reigning national champion South Carolina (19-1, 7-0), which is ranked No. 2, at Food City Center on Monday (7 p.m. ET, ESPN2).
Tennessee’s four losses to Oklahoma, LSU, Vanderbilt and Texas were by a combined eight points. Vanderbilt entered the AP poll this week at No. 23 after beating Alabama, and Texas moved up to No. 5 after beating Tennessee.
The Lady Vols were without coach Kim Caldwell at Texas due to the birth of her son, Conor Scott Caldwell. The first-year Tennessee coach had her son Monday, Jan. 20, and missed her first game of the season Thursday. But she plans to be back on the sidelines for the matchup with the Gamecocks, one week after delivering her first child.
The Lady Vols started Caldwell’s first season going 13-0 before suffering their first loss, which was their best start to a season since going 15-0 in 2017-18. Their 7-0 start got them back in the rankings on Dec. 9 with wins over Florida State and then-No. 20 Iowa.
Tennessee has been ranked in the polls for the last eight weeks, restarting its streak in the polls after being unranked for more than a year. Â In the entire history of the AP Top 25, Tennessee has spent 786 of 877 weeks ranked.
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Before getting ranked this season, the last time the Lady Vols had been ranked in the AP Top 25 was Week 4 of the 2023-24 season, which was released Nov. 27, 2023. Tennessee had only been ranked for 10 of the previous 45 weeks of the AP Top 25 since being ranked the entire 2021-22 season.
The Lady Vols climbed into the top 15 on Dec. 23 after winning three games away from Knoxville. Tennessee won its first true road game against Memphis and then won both its games at the West Palm Beach Classic against Richmond and Tulsa in a four-day span.
Cora Hall covers University of Tennessee women’s athletics. Email her at cora.hall@knoxnews.com and follow her on Twitter @corahalll. If you enjoy Cora’s coverage, consider a digital subscription that allows you to access all of it.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Updating Lady Vols rankings in college basketball polls after loss at Texas
