It took four polls and six wins, but the Iowa women's basketball team is finally ranked in the AP Top 25 for the first time in the 2024-25 season. Fresh off a defensively dominant 72-43 win over Washington State yesterday, the Hawkeyes entered the AP poll at #22 overall.

This is the first AP poll ranking for Iowa this season. The Hawkeyes spent the entirety of the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons ranked in the AP Top 25, peaking at #2 overall for several weeks last year.

Despite ending last season ranked #2 after finishing as NCAA runners-up to South Carolina, Iowa began the 2024-25 season unranked as a result of the significant lost production from last year's team after the departures of Caitlin Clark, Kate Martin, Gabbie Marshall, and Molly Davis. But behind Villanova transfer Lucy Olsen, increased roles for Addison O'Grady, Hannah Stuelke, Kylie Feuerbach, and Sydney Affolter, and an exciting freshman class (including Taylor Stremlow, Ava Heiden, and Teagan Mallegni) the new-look Hawkeyes have picked up where last year's team left off and started the season in impressive fashion.

The full AP Top 25 is listed below:

Iowa is one of eight Big Ten teams ranked in this week's Top 25, led by UCLA, the newly-crowned #1 team after beating South Carolina over the weekend. The other six ranked Big Ten teams are USC (#6), Maryland (#10), Ohio State (#11), Illinois (#19), Oregon (#21), and Nebraska (#25). No other conference has as many teams as the Big Ten, with the SEC having the second-most with seven ranked teams.

NEXT: Iowa will head to Cancun to take on Rhode Island and BYU this weekend.