It’s been nearly three years since the Kansas women’s basketball team received an AP Top 25 ranking, and the Jayhawks’ five-week span in the early 20s during the 2022-23 season has to this point been their only stint in the polls during Brandon Schneider’s decade as head coach.
KU did receive votes, however, in the AP’s preseason poll released on Tuesday ahead of the 2025-26 campaign — or rather, a vote. Specifically, it garnered a No. 19 ranking from one voter out of 31, the longtime ESPN and Fox Sports commentator Brenda VanLengen.
The Jayhawks haven’t been No. 19 in the preseason since 2009, but VanLengen was impressed by the resilience KU showed during an injury-plagued 2024-25 campaign and the leadership of S’Mya Nichols, and intrigued by the production of returning contributors like Sania Copeland, Elle Evans and Regan Williams and the potential of an “outstanding” freshman class.
“I feel like Kansas will be able to challenge in that top four to six in the Big 12,” VanLengen told the Journal-World in an interview on Thursday, “and as such, I thought that puts them in the top-25 position in the polls.”
VanLengen is a former assistant coach at Nebraska who has been involved with the Big 12 Conference since its inception. She said the contacts she has developed through three decades as a broadcaster, along with her own independent research, inform the process of constructing her preseason poll.
“I use my resources,” she said. “I reach out to coaches and other contacts around the country, and I cover mostly the SEC, the Big 12 and the Big Ten, and so I just reach out to my resources in all those conferences and just throughout the country just to get a feel for what they think will happen with the teams going forward this year.”
Her ranking in this case aligns with the consensus in some key ways — she shares the same top seven teams with the actual poll — and deviates in others. She’s higher on Ole Miss than average, and gave TCU the edge over Iowa State among the top teams in the Big 12. At the bottom of her rankings, teams like Ohio State and West Virginia take the place of Iowa, Michigan State and Richmond.
And then there’s KU, which she sees in competition with Oklahoma State (her No. 20) and WVU among the second tier of the Big 12 beneath TCU, ISU and Baylor. (Of Kansas State, she said, “There’s a lot of question marks, but from everything I’ve seen, I think they’re going to be just fine.”)
“I think Oklahoma State was actually voted by the coaches as higher than Kansas (in the Big 12 preseason poll),” she said. “I put them right next to each other in the poll. I think they’ll be very competitive. We’ll see. It depends on where they play each other and how all that shakes out.”
Several years ago, VanLengen, who is based in Olathe, decided she wanted to advocate for a vote in the poll because she felt the Midwest was not sufficiently represented among the voter base.
“I take that responsibility that I see Midwest schools probably more than anybody out there, and so I want to make sure that my vote represents that I see them,” VanLengen said. “And so it doesn’t surprise me when a school like Kansas doesn’t necessarily get voted into the polls because they were a little under the radar last year and people might not know as much about them, but I do.”
She knows the region well from a broad perspective, but she also knows Schneider’s teams. She’s seen them in action over the course of 15 years, ever since she called the Division II national championship that Schneider won at Emporia State.
“He’s an incredibly smart basketball coach, strategist, prepares his teams well, and all of those things have helped him to build back up the program at Kansas,” VanLengen said. “It’s not easy. The Big 12 is tough and has been very tough for a long time. And I think he’s really built his success on a focus on tenacious defense, being a disruptive defense to a lot of teams.”
KU’s 2025 recruiting class, which was a factor in VanLengen’s ranking, is arguably the best in program history. It features freshmen Tatyonna Brown, Jaliya Davis, Libby Fandel and Keeley Parks. VanLengen said she feels KU has benefited from recent up-and-coming local talent; from its success in prior years with the senior class that departed in 2024 with players like Zakiyah Franklin, Holly Kersgieter and Taiyanna Jackson; and from resources allocated toward the women’s basketball program.
“Getting S’Mya to commit, just with her local status, I guess, has helped attract others in this area,” she added. “I think (Schneider’s) built with solid fundamentals, really strong strategy, good recruiting and just night in and night out being well prepared against all these great teams in the Big 12.”
This year’s Jayhawks will debut unofficially on Friday at Late Night in the Phog, then host an exhibition against Fort Hays State on Oct. 29. The season begins for real on Nov. 5 against Kansas City at Allen Fieldhouse.
