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NEW YORK -- South Dakota earned a place in The Associated Press women's basketball poll for the first time in school history. The Coyotes are riding a nine-game winning streak and entered this week's poll at No. 25. Baylor is still No. 1 on Monday, receiving 22 votes from the national media panel. Louisville is second, with Oregon, UConn and Mississippi State rounding out the top five teams. Louisville and Oregon each received three first-place ballots. The Ducks are coming off an impressive 40-point win over Stanford on Sunday. It was Oregon's first victory at Stanford in 32 years. Despite the loss, the Cardinal moved up a spot to 10th. They beat then-No. 7 Oregon State on Friday. Notre Dame dropped to sixth after losing at Miami this week before beating Florida State. Maryland, Marquette and Oregon State fill out the remainder of the top 10. Utah fell out of the poll after losing to UCLA and USC. Dawn Plitzuweit's Coyotes program has been on a steady rise since moving up to Division I in 2008. "Certainly it's an exciting day for our team and program, our fans and our university," Plitzuweit said. "It speaks volumes to the hard work our young ladies have done to get to this point. It's certainly not the end goal of our program."  The Coyotes (22-3), who are off to their best start as a DI school, have five consecutive 20-win seasons. The team is 74-19 in Plitzuweit's three years at the school. She took over a team that won the WNIT title in 2016. "When you receive a ranking like this it speaks volumes to the young ladies and coaches that have been there before and what they did to build the program," she said. The Coyotes' first game as a ranked team will be on Saturday at Western Illinois. "Today we can celebrate it without focusing on being on the court then get back to work," Plitzuweit said. "This group is really hungry and on a mission right now to be the best they can be." South Dakota already has win this season over Iowa State and Missouri when the Tigers were ranked. Here are some other tidbits from the AP Top 25 this week: FALLING IRISH: Notre Dame fell out of the first five for the first time in 31 weeks. The Irish were last out of the top group on Nov. 20, 2017, when they were also sixth. RISING TO THE SUMMIT: South Dakota became the third Summit League team ever to be ranked, joining rival South Dakota State and Oral Roberts. South Dakota State had a 11-week run from middle of the 2008-09 season to the final poll that year. Oral Roberts was in for one week in 1983 before the school joined the Summit. TOP 25 SHOWDOWNS: UConn will host South Carolina on Monday night in the final non-conference tuneup for both teams. Oregon State will play at Oregon on Friday night in a huge Pac-12 clash. Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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