PHOENIX — The Associated Press will bring the 50th anniversary of the women’s Top 25 poll to Arizona State University from April 2-5 during Women’s Final Four week, pairing an in-person exhibit with a fan vote on the greatest player, coach and program of the poll era. The event caps a season-long anniversary look at one of women’s college basketball’s defining institutions and arrives as Phoenix prepares to host Arizona’s first NCAA Women’s Final Four, March 30, 2026.
The centerpiece is the AP Top 25 Fan Poll Experience, which will be staged at Arizona State’s First Amendment Forum inside the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The exhibit gives fans a chance to engage with the history of the poll while weighing in on the top player, coach and program of the poll era.
The exhibit will open during a Final Four week that also features Women’s Final Four Tourney Town and other fan events across downtown Phoenix. The official Phoenix Final Four site says Arizona is preparing to host the state’s first NCAA Women’s Final Four, with national semifinals on April 3 and the championship game on April 5, putting the AP display in the middle of the sport’s biggest weekend.
Why the women’s Top 25 poll still matters at 50
In an AP history of the poll’s launch, the news organization traced the ranking’s roots to 1976, when Philadelphia Inquirer sportswriter Mel Greenberg created the poll six years before the first NCAA women’s tournament. Long before today’s broad national coverage and social media debate, the poll helped give coaches, players and fans a national frame of reference for where programs stood.
The anniversary project has also widened the conversation beyond weekly rankings. AP revisited the all-time program hierarchy of the poll era, with UConn and Tennessee at the top, and later assembled a greatest-players list for the women’s poll era that included Cheryl Miller, Diana Taurasi and Caitlin Clark. Bringing the anniversary exhibit to Phoenix turns that retrospective into a live Final Four-week conversation.
How the Phoenix exhibit fits Final Four week
For visitors moving between games and fan festivals, the exhibit offers a pause from the bracket to look at the ranking system that helped shape the sport’s modern conversation. The setting at the Cronkite School also underscores the 50th-anniversary project’s media roots.
Rather than serving as a stand-alone retrospective, the Phoenix stop ties the poll’s early role in building national visibility for the sport to a Final Four weekend in which fans can weigh the greatest player, coach and program of the last 50 years for themselves.
