Paige Bueckers scored 31 points, including her team's final 13, to lead No. 2 UConn to a 63-59 overtime victory Monday over top-ranked South Carolina.
The freshman scored all of the Huskies' nine points in overtime, including a 3-pointer that bounced high off the back of the rim before dropping in to give the Huskies (14-1) the four-point margin with 10 seconds left.
The Gamecocks' Zia Cooke and Destanni Henderson missed 3-pointers in the final seconds.
The thriller came just hours after the Gamecocks and Huskies earned the top two spots in The Associated Press women's college basketball poll.
Coach Dawn Staley has South Carolina back where her team started the season: at No. 1 in The Associated Press women's college basketball poll.
The Gamecocks regained the top spot on Monday, receiving 29 of 30 first-place votes from a national media panel.
They likely won't stay there after the loss. It was the 60th matchup ever between the top two teams in the poll. It was only the second overtime game in those meetings.
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South Carolina, which originally fell from the top spot after losing to North Carolina State, beat the Huskies last season for the first time in eight tries. But the Gamecocks couldn't knock off UConn twice in a row.
Aliyah Boston had 17 points and 15 rebounds for South Carolina (15-2), which overcame a seven-point deficit in the fourth quarter. South Carolina had its 12-game winning streak snapped.
The same teams met five years ago to the day in another 1-2 contest. The positions were reversed and the Huskies stayed No. 1 with a 12-point win.
UConn moved up one spot to No. 2 on Monday after then-No. 1 Louisville lost at home to No. 4 N.C. State last week. The Cardinals fell to third and the Wolfpack remained fourth. They lost to unranked North Carolina on Sunday.
No 5. Stanford, Texas A&M and Baylor each moved up a spot, while UCLA, Maryland and Arizona rounded out the top 10. Arizona won at No. 11 Oregon on Monday night.
Mississippi State dropped out of the poll for the first time since 2014, ending a streak of 125 consecutive weeks in the Top 25. That was the fifth-longest active streak. The Bulldogs, who had been in every poll since Nov. 24, 2014, didn't play last week, when their game against Tennessee was postponed because of COVID-19 issues within the Lady Vols' program. The Bulldogs haven't played since Jan. 28 and have dropped their last three contests.
Missouri State entered the rankings at No. 25.
Here are other tidbits from the poll:
MILESTONE
Monday marked the 800th women's college basketball poll in the AP's history. No team has been in it more than Tennessee, with 745 appearances. The late Pat Summitt had 618 of those when she was in charge of the Lady Vols. The team was unranked only 14 weeks while she was coaching. UConn is second on the list with 554, all under Geno Auriemma.
According to poll historian Mel Greenberg, who started the poll in 1976, Kim Mulkey is the active leader with 663 poll appearances from her time as a player at Louisiana Tech, an assistant coach there and head coach of Baylor. Mulkey trails only former Tennessee player and coach Holly Warlick for most all-time appearances. Warlick had 693 appearances in the poll.
GAME OF THE WEEK
Oregon at UCLA, Friday: a huge Pac-12 matchup with the Ducks visiting the Bruins. UCLA suffered a tough loss at Washington State on Friday night.
