Women's Basketball ranked No. 12 in preseason USA Today/ESPN Top 25 Poll
AUSTIN, Texas -- The Texas women's basketball team is ranked No. 12 overall and is the second top-ranked Big 12 Conference squad in the 2005-06 USA Today/ESPN Top 25 Preseason Coaches Poll, released on Wednesday. Texas will meet five of the top-10 rated squads this upcoming campaign, including top-ranked Tennessee and Duke. Texas is coming off a 22-9 season which saw Jody Conradt's Longhorns advance to the NCAA Championship second round after placing second behind eventual national titlist Baylor in the Big 12 Conference regular season race. Tennessee is No. 1 in the USA TODAY/ESPN preseason poll with Duke, LSU and Ohio State, with Rutgers and Georgia tied at No. 5, rounding out the top five. The Lady Vols picked up 19 of the 26 first-place votes and gained 756 points to top Duke (3 first-place votes, 724 points) and LSU (3 first-place votes, 668 points) in the poll. The other first-place vote went to ninth-place Stanford. Texas is one of four teams from the Big 12 Conference listed among the Top 25 ranked teams. The others are Baylor (7th), Texas Tech (13th) and Oklahoma (25th). The Longhorns will face a total of seven of these Top 25 squads - with a possible eighth opponent as well. This includes the Longhorns going against five of the top 10-ranked teams - Tennessee, Duke, Rutgers, Baylor and Connecticut. Texas meets Tennessee and Duke in back-to-back early games, with the Longhorns traveling to Knoxville, Tenn. and putting their four-game series win streak on the line against the No. 1 ranked Lady Vols (Thur., Dec. 1, 6 p.m. on ESPN2). Three days later (Sun., Dec. 1), Duke visits Austin for a 12:30 p.m. game to air on FSN (FOX Sports Net). Texas meets Rutgers in Piscataway, NJ on Friday, Dec. 30 (6 p.m., CSTV telecast) and then hosts Connecticut on Sunday, Feb. 12 (2 p.m., ESPN2) at the Frank Erwin Center. The other USA Today/ESPN Top 25 preseason teams Texas faces are its Big 12 opponents. The first USA Today/ESPN regular season weekly poll will be released on Tuesday, Nov. 15. Texas opens up exhibition play at the Frank Erwin Center on Thursday, Nov. 3 against Everyones Internet (7 p.m.), a team from the Houston area comprised of former collegians, WNBA and European pro players. Texas women's basketball has numerous ticket plans in place for the 2005-06 season (full season ticket packages, a five-game mini-season ticket package, group ticket sales and single game ticket purchases). For more information on UT basketball tickets, go to TexasBoxOffice.com or call 512-471-3333 or 1-800-982-BEVO. For charge-by-phone, you can call 512-477-6060. Tickets can be purchased in person at the following locations: Bellmont Hall Athletics Ticket Office (Mon.-Fri., 9 a.m-4 p.m. Central); and at any Texas Box Office location, including the Frank Erwin Center (Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-6 p.m. and game days prior to tipoff) or at Austin area H-E-B stores.
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