Biggest disappointments of 2025-26 women's college basketball season: What's wrong with the ACC?

Earlier this week, my colleague Isabel Gonzalez looked at some of the biggest surprises at this point in the women's college basketball season. Now it's my turn to take a stab at the biggest disappointments -- which, let's face it, isn't quite as fun! However, it's important to take stock of where we are compared to where we thought we'd be.

The good news for all of these figures on our list? There's still a month of the regular season left, and, as history has taught us, March is full of madness. This is far from the final word on these seasons.

Without further caveats, here are my biggest disappointments of the season.

The ACC

I mean, really, where else is there to start? I had so many ACC teams on my long list of disappointments that I decided the entire conference just needed to be put on blast.

At the beginning of the season, there were two ACC teams in the top 10 and five total in the AP top 25: Duke at No. 7, NC State at No. 9,  North Carolina at No. 11, Notre Dame at No. 15 and Louisville at No. 20, with Stanford also receiving votes. By Week 3, there were zero teams in the top 10 and by Week 5, only three ACC teams were left in the rankings. Louisville climbed into the top 10 by Week 9, but only two ACC teams have been ranked in the top 25 since then. (As a comparison, this week the SEC had a record 10 teams in the poll, the Big Ten had seven and the Big 12 had four.) It's been bleak, friends. Right now, CBS Sports bracketologist Connor Groel only projects that one ACC team -- yes, Louisville -- will get a coveted top-four seed.

Louisville is the only team that can truly be said to have surpassed expectations; everyone else has either held court or been a dud.

The three biggest disappointments in the conference come from my home state of North Carolina. Last season, Duke, North Carolina and NC State all hosted games in the first round of the NCAA Tournament and advanced to the Sweet 16. Unfortunately, Duke and North Carolina faced off in the Sweet 16 -- in a game that we do not speak of -- and Duke was the lone team to make it to the Elite Eight. But still: It was a pretty good year and in the preseason poll, all three were in the top 11.

However, preseason conference favorites Duke started the season 3-6. Now, head coach Kara Lawson scheduled a particularly difficult nonconference schedule, so four of those losses came to No. 16 Baylor, No. 2 South Carolina, No. 3 UCLA and No. 5 LSU. But there were still some extremely low points -- a road loss to South Florida and an embarrassing performance at West Virginia, when the Blue Devils lost despite seven Mountaineers getting ejected before halftime, leaving West Virginia with only five available players the entire second half.

NC State also had a similar story -- in part because of a tough nonconference schedule, and in part because of underperformance, the Wolfpack got off to a 5-4 start that included a humiliating home loss against Rhode Island. North Carolina didn't stumble out of the gates as much -- it started the season 10-2, with the only losses benign to No. 3 UCLA and No. 4 Texas -- but has sputtered since. Home overtime losses to Louisville and Stanford and a humbling showing on the road against Notre Dame have put the Tar Heels on the outside of the top 25 looking in. 

But this isn't a one-state problem, either. Stanford and Cal have failed to improve their prospects significantly during their second year in the ACC, Clemson is feisty but inconsistent, Florida State is in free-fall in the post-Ta'Niya Latson era and Notre Dame is a disaster that not even Hannah Hidalgo can clean up. And the problem compounds itself; since so few teams were ranked once conference play began, Quad 1 wins have become hard to rack up. Overall, a conference that was once a proud women's basketball haven is now being left in the dust by the SEC and Big Ten.

If you need some hope, though, it's not as hard to come by as it was a couple of weeks ago. Duke has done a great job steadying itself after the rocky start and is currently on an 11-game winning streak and ranked in the top 20 -- Groel has it as a No. 5 seed in the latest CBS projections, meaning it could potentially host in first round. NC State and North Carolina both received votes in the latest AP poll, too, and there are 11 ACC teams in the top 50 in NET. The conference will be represented in the NCAA Tournament, but it's unlikely it will be a force.

Iowa State in conference play

Just one month ago, at the end of 2025, the Iowa State Cyclones were 14-0 and Audi Crooks looked like the best player in the country. While yes, their nonconference schedule was hardly a murderer's row, they did pick up a very impressive 74-69 win over then-No. 11 Iowa in December and their No. 2 standing in the Big 12 preseason media poll looked like it might have been conservative. 

But then the calendar switched to 2026 and everything changed. In January, the Cyclones went on a five-game conference losing streak, falling to No. 22 Baylor and unranked Cincinnati, West Virginia, Colorado and Oklahoma State in quick succession. The Cyclones went from being ranked No. 10 in the AP poll to being unranked in the span of three weeks. While Crooks still put up impressive offensive numbers in most games, her defensive liabilities were exposed and exploited, and the rest of the team looked lost.

Now, injuries are a big part of this rough patch. Junior forward Addy Brown has been out since the second game in January with a lower-body injury and there is no timetable for her return and Arianna Jackson missed a couple of weeks with a knee injury. The Cyclones have won three games in a row this week, so things are headed back in the right direction. But that five-game losing streak will haunt them when it comes time for seedings in March and what once looked liked a season to remember has certainly lost its shine.

Indiana

There were a few Big Ten teams I contemplated highlighting here, most notably USC, a team that has gone 1-6 in January and is 13th in the Big Ten standings a month into conference play. But with JuJu Watkins out, this was always going to be a rough season for the Trojans. 

I went with Indiana, a team coming off six straight NCAA Tournament appearances and that has three Sweet 16 and one Elite Eight appearances since 2021. 

The Hoosiers are still winless in Big Ten play. That's 0-9. They are on an eight-game losing streak and this week, they lost to Purdue for the first time since 2016. The bright spot is Shay Ciezki, who leads the Big Ten with 23.6 points per game, but that's it. Expectations weren't high this season after losing four of five starters, but this is an embarrassing season for a proud program.

The positive? The Hoosiers have a great recruiting class next year, Teri Moren is an excellent coach and things really can't get much worse from here.