South Carolina a unanimous No. 1 in women's AP Top 25, Stanford and Oregon crack rankings

South Carolina was the unanimous No. 1 in The Associated Press Top 25 women's basketball poll Monday after a pair of victories to kick off its national championship repeat bid while Kansas State joined the top 10 and both Stanford and Oregon cracked the first regular-season rankings of the season.

The Gamecocks earned a hard-fought six-point win over Michigan in Las Vegas to open the season and beat then-No. 9 North Carolina State on Sunday by 14. The two victories made the defending champions a unanimous choice from the 31-member national media panel. In the preseason poll, No. 2 UConn got two first-place votes and No. 3 USC one.

The top eight teams in the rankings remained unchanged with Texas and UCLA rounding out the top five. Notre Dame, LSU and Iowa State were next with Oklahoma ninth and Kansas State 10th. N.C. State dropped to 13th.

Former Pac-12 schools Stanford and Oregon entered the rankings after impressive starts to their season. The No. 24 Cardinal, under new coach Kate Paye, went 3-0 last week, winning by an average of 41 points. They had been ranked in the preseason poll every year since 2000 until this season.