| 20 QUESTIONS |
 She prefers Friends over Survivor, and Madonna over Britney. And when it comes to movies, Harry Potter gets the nod over Star Wars because she likes "wizards better than aliens." See what else Baylor senior Danielle Crockrom revealed about herself in ESPN.com's 20 Questions. |
|
|
Connecticut has easily been the most impressive team of the season so far. But that's no surprise. The Huskies were the preseason No. 1 and returned all five starters from last season's NCAA Tournament.
But teams like South Carolina, Kansas State and Cincinnati have provided the real success stories.
None of the three teams received even one vote in the preseason ESPN/USA Today coaches' poll, which was released Nov. 5. Now, two months later, the Lady Gamecocks are 15-1 overall, and after upsets over three top-10 teams, are ranked 10th in this week's poll and will most likely jump a few more spots after beating eighth-ranked Georgia on Thursday.
The Wildcats, meanwhile, upset then-No. 4 Iowa State and then-No. 8 Baylor last week, then debuted at No. 18 this week. Cincinnati is still clinging to the No. 25 spot after earning its first-ever national ranking two weeks ago.
Then there's Wisconsin, winner of 12 straight and holding down the No. 9 spot in this week's poll. The Badgers, who have one of the country's toughest schedules, received only 17 votes in the preseason coaches poll, but have beat Florida, N.C. State, then-No. 7 Purdue and then-No. 17 Michigan. At 5-0 in the Big Ten, Wisconsin is off to its best conference start and boasts a program-best 14-1 mark on the season.
Texas and Jody Conradt, the winningest coach in women's basketball history, started off the week ranked 17th before notching a 66-65 upset of fifth-ranked Iowa State on Wednesday. The Longhorns beat then-No. 14 Colorado last week, and also posted a win over then-No. 18 LSU in November.
Still, South Carolina gets our vote as the most surprising team of the first half of the season. For the first time in 20 years, the Lady Gamecocks are ranked in the top 10 in both the Associated Press and ESPN/USA coaches' poll. The last time that a South Carolina women’s basketball team was ranked this high was during the 1981-1982 season.
South Carolina's wins include victories over then-No. 7 Duke, which hadn't lost a nonconference home game in two years, as well as then-No. 16 North Carolina and then-No. 6 Vanderbilt. Thursday's win over Georgia snapped an eight-game losing streak to the Lady Bulldogs.
"Every time this team has been challenged this year," South Carolina coach Susan Walvius said after beating Georgia, "we have really stepped up."
No doubt. And as a result, the Lady Gamecocks are off to their best start, and have opened the SEC season with a 3-0 mark for the first time in school history. Last season, the Lady Gamecocks won a school-record six SEC games and tied for sixth in the conference, the team's highest finish.
We're betting both those records will have fallen when Selection Sunday rolls around.
| SELLOUT SATURDAY |
| First, the Connecticut-Tennessee at Thompson-Boling Arena sold out last Saturday. Now, Saturday's game between second-ranked Oklahoma and No. 11 Baylor has been sold out. The game is part of Baylor's "Sellout 2002, Back-2-Back" program. The first part of the program, the Baylor men's game against Iowa State on Jan. 5, was a sellout, as well. The record for the largest women's Ferrell Center crowd was set on Mar. 24, 1998, when 10,057 attended Baylor's WNIT championship game against Penn State.
|
|
| THAT'S STATS |
| After her record-setting performance, Penn State's Kelly Mazzante overtook the lead as the nation's top scorer. The Penn State sophomore is averaging 26.3 points through 16 games. UAB's Deanna Jackson, out with a fractured leg, averaged 26.2 points over 11 games before the injury. St. Joseph's Susan Moran ranks third at 24.8 points per game, followed by Tennessee Tech's Janet Holt (24.3) and Lenae Williams (22.9). Click here to check out the complete list of the country's leading scorers. |
|
| DID YOU KNOW? |
| Iowa State needed overtime to win two games in late December, then suffered losses in each of the past two weeks, first to Kansas State on Jan. 2, then to Texas on Wednesday. But what you might not know is that Lindsey Wilson, Angie Welle and Tracy Gahan are accounting for 67 percent of Iowa State's offense. Wilson leads the way with a 20.2 average (303 points), followed by Welle's 19.3 average (289 pts.) and Gahan at 13.9 (209) points. No other player is averaging double-figures, and only one player has scored more than 100 points. |
|
Melanie Jackson is the women's college basketball editor at ESPN.com. Click here to e-mail the Dish with any story ideas, suggestions or feedback.
|
| |
|
