With five starters back from last season's Final Four team, Duke received 25 of 40 first-place votes to open at No. 1 in the preseason ESPN/USA Today coaches poll released Tuesday.

The Blue Devils, who were 31-4 last season and are paced by national player of the year candidate Alana Beard and All-American hopefuls Iciss Tillis and Monique Currie, received 976 points.

Tennessee garnered eight first-place votes and 944 points for a No. 2 ranking. Connecticut, which went 39-0 last season for its third NCAA title before graduating four starters, was ranked third with six first-place votes and 804 points. LSU and Kansas State helped complete the top five.

Prior to this season, the Duke women had never been ranked higher than third. Duke also was ranked No. 1 in the preseason Associated Press Top 25 that was released Monday, and has topped nearly every preseason women's poll released by basketball magazines and Internet sites this fall.

Rounding out the top 10 are Stanford, Texas Tech, Purdue, Georgia and 10th-ranked Vanderbilt, which received the remaining first-place vote.

Oklahoma, last season's NCAA runner-up after falling to UConn in the national championship game, is ranked 19th.

Georgia is one of five teams included in the poll that weren't ranked at the end of the 2001-02 season. Four teams from the SEC were ranked in the top 10. The Big 12 and SEC both had five representatives in the coaches poll.