30 of 31 Votes Put Sarah Strong on the AP Preseason All-America Team

Photo: UConn Athletics. Sarah Strong, UConn forward.

UConn's Sarah Strong landed on 30 of 31 ballots for the AP preseason All-America women's team released Thursday, one vote short of unanimous. Notre Dame's Hannah Hidalgo and Texas' Madison Booker got 28 each, Vanderbilt's Mikayla Blakes 27 and USC's JuJu Watkins 26, so the last player on the team still showed up on 84 percent of ballots.

The vote spread

Thirty-one voters picking five players each comes to 155 votes, by The Dyme's math. The five who made the team took 139 of them. That leaves 16 votes for every other player in the country combined.

Put that next to the men's team from a day earlier. Jeremy Fears Jr. got 57 of 58 there, almost the same share Strong got here. The men's board fell apart after the top three. Its fifth pick, Arizona's Motiejus Krivas, made it on 17 votes, 29 percent of ballots by The Dyme's math, and players off the team pulled 93 votes, close to a third of the total by The Dyme's count. On the women's side, the gap between first and fifth is four votes, and the five picks took about 90 percent of everything cast.

Two of those five have already won AP Player of the Year. Watkins won it in 2024-25, Strong in 2025-26.

Strong's numbers

Strong averaged 18.4 points, 7.7 rebounds, 3.8 assists, 3.4 steals and 1.6 blocks for a UConn team that went 38-1 and lost in the Final Four. She shot 58.2 percent from the field and 40.4 from three.

She is back for her junior year as the reigning national player of the year, and UConn opens No. 2 behind South Carolina in a poll where South Carolina took 23 of 31 first-place votes. The Huskies go to Michigan on Nov. 5, the first top-five meeting on the board. One voter left her off.

Hidalgo and Booker, three years running

Hidalgo and Booker are preseason picks for the third straight season. Hidalgo, a 5-foot-7 senior point guard, averaged 25.3 points and 5.6 steals last season, 202 steals in 36 games. She has been ACC Defensive Player of the Year in each of her three seasons, and a third straight ACC Player of the Year would put her with Alana Beard, Alyssa Thomas and Elizabeth Kitley as the only players to do it, according to the AP. Notre Dame came within a win of the Final Four last season. She shot 25.4 percent from three last season after 40 percent the year before.

Booker comes in as a three-time first-team All-American, per Texas. She averaged 18.9 points, 6.7 rebounds and 3.7 assists on 50.8 percent shooting, and she sits 31 points from 2,000 for her career. Only three players in Texas history have reached that mark. She opens the season fifth on the school's scoring list at 1,969, and the Longhorns start No. 6.

Blakes scored more than anyone

Blakes led Division I at 27.0 points a game as a sophomore. Her 918 points set the SEC single-season record and the NCAA record for a sophomore, and she averaged 30.5 in league games with 12 games of 30 or more against SEC defenses. She is the first Vanderbilt player named an AP preseason All-American since Chantelle Anderson in 2002-03, 24 seasons ago.

With Tyler Tanner on the men's team Wednesday, Vanderbilt is the first school since Duke in 2014-15 to put a man and a woman on the preseason team in the same year. The Commodores open No. 8, their first consensus top-10 preseason ranking since 2001-02.

Watkins after the ACL

Watkins got the fewest votes of the five. She tore her ACL in the 2025 NCAA Tournament and missed all of last season. Her last full year was 23.9 points a game in 2024-25, the year she won Player of the Year.

Twenty-six voters put her on the team anyway. Five left her off. USC opens No. 3, and the Trojans meet South Carolina on Nov. 15 in Greenville.

UConn opens No. 2, USC No. 3, Texas No. 6 and Vanderbilt No. 8. The season tips Nov. 1 with Notre Dame and Villanova in Rome, so Hidalgo is the first of the five on the floor.

Photo: Texas Athletics. Madison Booker, Texas forward.

Sources

• AP News: UConn's Sarah Strong and USC's JuJu Watkins headline preseason AP All-America women's team. Oct. 22, 2026. Team, votes from the 31-member panel, Strong and Watkins Player of the Year wins, Hidalgo and Booker third straight year, Strong 18.4 points and 7.7 rebounds, Watkins ACL.
• AP News: Women's Preseason All-America Team. Oct. 22, 2026. Team list with votes.
• Vanderbilt Athletics: Preseason All-American. Oct. 22, 2026. Vote table, Blakes 27.0 points, 918-point records, 30.5 in SEC play, 12 30-point SEC games, Anderson history, Vanderbilt men's and women's pair, No. 8 ranking.
• Texas Athletics: Booker named Associated Press Preseason All-American. Oct. 22, 2026. Third preseason selection, three-time first-team All-American, 1,969 career points.
• AP via WRAL: Notre Dame's Hannah Hidalgo has grown from freshman star to a heralded face of the sport. ACC honors, ACC Player of the Year history, Notre Dame one win from the Final Four.
• Sports Reference: Women's AP Preseason All-American players. 2025-26 and 2024-25 per-game and shooting stats for Strong, Hidalgo, Booker and Watkins.
• AP via ESPN: Spartans' Fears, Gators' Haugh near-unanimous picks as preseason All-Americans. Oct. 21, 2026. Men's vote table from the 58-member panel: Fears 57, Krivas 17, 93 votes to players off the team.
• Ballot totals (155 votes, 139 to the team, 16 elsewhere, percentages, and the men's 29 percent and 93-of-290 share) are Dyme calculations from the AP vote tables. Rankings, UConn record and schedule dates come from CBS Sports: JuJu Watkins has USC at No. 3 in AP Top 25, Oct. 20, 2026.