TCU has grabbed its best ranking ever in The Associated Press Top 25 women's basketball poll on Monday after a convincing win over Notre Dame as the rankings got a shakeup following a holiday tournament week marked by key losses.
The Horned Frogs climbed eight spots to No. 9, the first time the school has ever been in the top 10. The team's best previous ranking was 13th in 2004.
The Fighting Irish, who were third last week, fell seven spots to 10th after losses to TCU and Utah in the Cayman Islands.
UCLA remained No. 1 with UConn right behind them. The Bruins received 25 first-place votes from a national media panel while the Huskies garnered the other seven. The Bruins won three games in three days in Hawaii over the Thanksgiving weekend. The Huskies had two wins in a holiday tournament in the Bahamas.
South Carolina, Texas and LSU follow UConn in the poll. The Tigers leaped past USC to move up to fifth. The Trojans, Maryland, Duke, TCU and Notre Dame round out the top 10.
The Blue Devils moved up five spots to eighth after beating then-No. 9 Kansas State and No. 8 Oklahoma in a tournament in Las Vegas. It's the highest ranking for Duke in a decade, matching the No. 8 ranking on Nov. 24, 2014. The Wildcats fell to 13th and the Sooners 11th.
Both Michigan and Michigan State entered the poll for the first time this season. The last time the two schools both were ranked was Jan. 4, 2021. That was the No. 24 Spartans' last appearance in the Top 25. The 23rd-ranked Wolverines were in the final poll of the 2023 season.
N.C. State dropped out of the poll for the first time in 24 weeks, which had been the 10th longest active streak. The Wolfpack are 4-3 with all of those losses coming to current top 10 opponents (South Carolina, TCU and LSU). Wes Moore's squad faces No. 18 Ole Miss on Thursday in the SEC/ACC challenge. Oregon also fell out.
Alabama moved up four spots to No. 19, the school's best ranking in 25 years. The Crimson Tide improved to 9-0 with a 98-49 win Monday over Georgia State, the team's best start since going 9-0 to open the 2000-01 season.
The Big Ten has nine teams ranked in the poll, most of any conference. The SEC is second with seven. The ACC and Big 12 each have four Top 25 teams and the Big East has one.
No. 4 Texas at No. 10 Notre Dame, Thursday. The SEC/ACC challenge brings a lot of great matchups, including the Longhorns visiting the Irish. The game features two of the best duos in the game with Texas stars Madison Booker and Rori Harmon playing against Notre Dame's Olivia Miles and Hannah Hidalgo. The Irish are looking to snap a two-game skid.
Southern California forward Kiki Iriafen, right, collides with Seton Hall forward Yaya Lops during the second half of an NCAA women's college basketball game in Palm Desert, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — A court in Vietnam on Tuesday upheld the death sentence for real estate tycoon Truong My Lan but said it could be commuted to life if she reimburses some $11 billion, or three-fourths of what she defrauded in the country’s largest financial crime.
The scale of her fraud shocked the nation with analysts raising questions about whether other banks or businesses had similarly erred. It has also dampened Vietnam’s economic outlook and made foreign investors jittery at a time when Vietnam has been trying to position itself as a home for businesses pivoting their supply chains away from China.
Lan, 67, was convicted in April of embezzlement and bribery amounting to $12.5 billion, equivalent to 3% of the country’s GDP. As chairperson of the Van Thinh Phat real estate firm, the court said she illegally controlled Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank between 2012 and 2022 and allowed 2,500 loans that cost the bank $27 billion in losses.
A higher court in Ho Chi Minh on Tuesday rejected her appeal of the conviction but said that her death sentence could be commuted to life if she reimburses three-fourth of the losses, working out to around $11 billion, state media reported.
Her lawyers argued that she had repaid the money but the court disagreed since there were legal issues with some of the seized properties and prosecuting agencies couldn't assess their value, VN Express reported.
Lan's lawyers also noted several mitigating circumstances — she had admitted guilt, showed remorse and had paid back part of the amount.
“I feel pained due to the waste of national resources,” she said last week, according to state media.
But the court said her violations had negatively impacted banking, caused public disorder and eroded people’s trust, VN Express said.
Under Vietnamese law, death sentences aren't immediately carried out and there is an extended legal process, said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow in the Vietnam Studies Program at Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute. He added that Lan would seek another review of the case or a presidential pardon to reduce her sentence.
“Moreover, if she repays at least three-quarters of the misappropriated funds, the court may consider commuting her sentence to life imprisonment,” he said.
Her arrest was among the most high-profile in an anti-corruption drive in Vietnam that intensified after 2022. The so-called Blazing Furnace campaign touched the highest echelons of Vietnamese politics.
Lan, 67, and her family had set up the Van Thing Phat company in 1992, after Vietnam shed its state-run economy in favor of a more market-oriented approach open to foreigners. The company grew into one of Vietnam’s richest real estate firms, with luxury residential buildings, offices, hotels and shopping centers.
This made her a key player in the country’s financial industry. She orchestrated the 2011 merger of the beleaguered SCB bank with two other lenders in coordination with Vietnam’s central bank. The court said that she used this to tap SCB for cash and, according to government documents, owned more than 90% of the bank while approving thousands of loans to “ghost companies.”
These loans, according to state media, found their way to her and she bribed officials to cover her tracks.
The scale of the crime meant the case was split into two trials, and Lan was sentenced to another life sentence in October. At that trial, she was accused of raising $1.2 billion from nearly 36,000 investors by issuing bonds illegally through four companies, state media reported.
She was also found guilty of siphoning off $18 billion obtained through fraud and for using companies controlled by her to illegally transfer more than $4.5 billion in and out of Vietnam between 2012 and 2022.
Vietnam has handed down more than 2,000 death sentences in the past decade and executed more than 400 prisoners. It is a possible sentence for 14 different crimes but is typically applied for cases of murder and drug trafficking.
Vietnamese real estate tycoon Truong My Lan, second left, attends trial in an appeal she filed against her death sentence in a financial fraud case in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (Tran Quynh/VNExpress via AP)
Vietnamese real estate tycoon Truong My Lan attends trial in an appeal she filed against her death sentence in a financial fraud case in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (Tran Quynh/VNExpress via AP)
