Last season was an incredible one for women's college basketball, and despite LSU's Angel Reese and Iowa's Caitlin Clark moving on to the WNBA, the fun will continue. Dawn Stalely will have a strong South Carolina team, and JuJu Watkins will help the USC Trojans make noise in the Big Ten, but plenty of other storylines await.
From UConn winning the national title to Kenny Brooks turning things around at Kentucky, here are five predictions for the 2024-25 season.
Paige Bueckers ends NCAA career as national champion
OK, this one comes with an if. South Carolina is still the team to beat right now, but UConn will be very dangerous if the Huskies can get (and stay) healthy.
Azzi Fudd (torn ACL), Caroline Ducharme (head/neck) and Aubrey Griffin (torn ACL) are three key players that will not be ready to play at the beginning of the 2024-25 season. However, Fudd is expected to be the first one back, and that will be a huge boost for Geno Auriemma's group.
This is a very talented roster and Paige Bueckers will be hungrier than ever. Bueckers could technically return for another season, but for now she said the plan is this will be her last. Bueckers missed the entire 2022-23 campaign after tearing her ACL, and at that time Fudd was becoming the leader of the team -- until she also got injured. Fudd and Bueckers have only played 17 games together over three years.
Bueckers established herself as a strong offensive player since her freshman year, but last season she became physically stronger and a better defender. Despite the team being short-handed because of injury woes, the Huskies made it back to the Final Four for the 15th time in 16 years -- the one miss being when Bueckers was out. If they did that with a seven-player rotation, imagine what they could do with a few more healthy players. Auriemma also added Sarah Strong, the No.1 recruit from the class of 2024.
Stanford will be a top-25 team
Stanford is unranked in the preseason for the first time since 1999, and there are definitely a few reasons why. The Pac-12 as we know it disintegrated, and the Cardinal lost longtime coach Tara VanDerveer to retirement. Kiki Iriafen, the Pac-12's Most Improved Player, transferred to USC during the offseason, and Naismith Defensive Player of the Year Cameron Brink has moved on to the WNBA.
There seem to be more questions than answers when it comes to the Cardinal, but perhaps Stanford is still being underestimated. Although VanDerveer is gone, Kate Paye has been an integral part of the program, so not much should change with how things are run. She has been part of the Stanford coaching staff for 17 years, with eight of those as an associate head coach. Since the WBCA Assistant Coach of the Year for Division I was instituted in 2016, Paye has been the only one to win it twice (2022 and 2024).
The Cardinal are not returning any double-digit scorers, but they do have some valuable experience in seniors Brooke Demetre and Elena Bosgana, as well as junior Talana Lepolo. Some of the team's strongest additions include Purdue's Mary Ashley Stevenson, Santa Clara's Tess Heal and freshman Kennedy Umeh.
Kenny Brooks lifts Kentucky to winning record
The Wildcats have had back-to-back losing seasons, but Kenny Brooks arriving as the new coach should help get the team back on the right track. It won't be easy, especially since the SEC got even stronger with the additions of Texas and Oklahoma, but he proved himself at Virginia Tech.
During his time with the Hokies, Brooks went 180-82 and took the team to the Final Four in 2023. One of the key players on that roster was Georgia Amoore, and she used her fifth year of eligibility to follow Brooks to Kentucky, along with now-sophomore Clara Strack.
Amoore, an SEC preseason first-team selection, averaged 18.8 points and 6.9 assists per game in 2023-24. Meanwhile, Strack started picking up momentum late in the season and averaged 9.4 points and 6.8 rebounds in her final five games.
Brooks himself said the Wildcats currently "have a long ways to go," but when a coach gets to bring his "quarterback" (as he described Amoore), things should be a lot easier because he won't have to start from scratch.
Nebraska finishes top five in Big Ten
The Cornhuskers were not ranked in the top five of the preseason poll, but they will be a team to watch in the wildly competitive Big Ten because of what they showed last season.
Nebraska defeated Iowa, the national title runner-up, during the regular season. A month later, the Cornhuskers showed that wasn't a fluke as they took the Hawkeyes to overtime in the Big Ten Tournament title game.
Despite the departure of All-Big Ten guard Jaz Shelley, the Cornhuskers still have a lot of talent and gained valuable experience last season. Nebraska got to keep four of their top-five leading scorers, including Alexis Markowski, who averaged 15.7 points and 10.5 rebounds per game a season ago and is a preseason All-Big Ten Team selection.
Harvard gets first Ivy League POTY since 2005
The last time Harvard had an Ivy League Player of the Year was Reka Cserny in 2005, but Harmoni Turner has the stats to end the drought.
Turner averaged 18.5 points, 6.6 rebounds, 4.3 assists, and 2.2 steals per game during her junior season, and she has received First Team All-Ivy honors two consecutive years. She also had a productive summer that included winning a gold medal at the 2024 FIBA 3x3 U23 World Cup in Mongolia.
Harvard has not participated in the NCAA Women's Tournament since 2007, but some very talented players have come out of the program. One of the most recent examples was McKenzie Forbes, a graduate student for USC last season who became one of the key players in the Trojans' first Elite Eight run since 1994.