Texas women's basketball coach Vic Schaefer is used to encountering sharks during his summer outings chasing speckled trout and redfish at Port O'Connor. He goes wade fishing, which means he stands in the water among the sandbar sharks, blacktip sharks and bull sharks that linger in the area.

This preseason, several outlets have lowered their rankings of South Carolina women’s basketball following the injury to senior forward Chloe Kitts. Kitts’ ACL tear (coupled with Ashlyn Watkins’ absence) prompted both On3’s Talia Goodman and the SEC coaches to push the Gamecocks below the Texas Longhorns in the Southeastern Conference.

On Wednesday, Texas topped the preseason poll that was voted on by SEC coaches. South Carolina, LSU, Oklahoma and Tennessee were respectively picked to finish second, third, fourth and fifth.

BATON ROUGE, La. – LSU women’s basketball players Flau’jae Johnson, Mikaylah Williams and newcomer MiLaysia Fulwiley received recognition Wednesday from the league’s coaches as selections for the preseason All-SEC teams.

On Wednesday, the SEC league office announced results from the conference’s coaches’ preseason voting for All-SEC teams and end-of-season standings. Perhaps surprisingly, South Carolina women’s basketball was not picked as the league’s champion.

South Carolina women's basketball is predicted to finish second in the SEC to Texas, according to coaches in the preseason poll released Oct. 22.

See who USA TODAY Sports Network predicted to win the SEC women's basketball regular-season championship and order of finish for the 2025-26 season

On Monday, Texas was picked to finish second in a preseason poll released by the SEC. South Carolina will enter this season as the league's frontrunner.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) - The South Carolina women’s basketball team was voted to finish first in the SEC for the regular season in the media’s preseason poll, the league’s office announced on Monday. The Gamecocks are looking to win their fourth-straight regular-season conference title after splitting the championship with Texas last season.

The conference revealed on Oct. 13 that South Carolina women's basketball and coach Dawn Staley are predicted to finish first in the SEC in 2025-26.

LSU’s MiLaysia Fulwiley was named to the Nancy Lieberman Award Watchlist Monday by the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame as one of the Top-20