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Paul Ratcliffe’s Stanford Cardinal came THIS close to winning a national title last season, but fell short in the College Cup final to Anson Dorrance’s North Carolina Tar Heels, who won their 21st national title with a 2-1 victory in College Station.

We like the Cardinal to get over the hump this year and bring a national crown back to Palo Alto.

The ranking is our unique effort to track the 64 NCAA Tournament qualifiers through the season. Thus the overall profile of the list reflects all conferences receiving automatic tournament bids, plus the at-large selections from larger conferences. The ACC for instance has 8 teams in the preseason ranking, and the PAC 10 has 7, including #1 Stanford.

Despite losing co-player of the year Kelley O’Hara to graduation, Stanford returns her partner in goal-scoring crime, Christen Press (21 goals and 16 assists) to the fold. U20 Women’s National Team striker Courtney Verloo should assume more of the offensive load and her national teammate Teresa Noyola will once again pull the strings in the midfield. Add the likes of ballwinner extraordinaire Mariah Nogueira, speedy winger Lindsay Taylor and defensive standouts Alina Garciamendez and Rachel Quon and you can see why we are bullish on the Cardinal.

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But the road to the championship goes through Chapel Hill. North Carolina lost standouts Tobin Heath, Casey Nogueira, Whitney Engen and three other starters to graduation, but you know the Tar Heels will at least be in the reckoning at the end. We didn’t pick them #1 at the beginning of either of the past two seasons and you know who ended up lifting the College Cup those years.

Other perennial contenders high in the ranking include Notre Dame, UCLA, Boston College, Texas A&M(w), Florida State and Portland. We’re especially interested to see how Alison Kulik’s Eagles do as a series of excellent recruiting years come to fruition this season.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE WOMEN'S PRESEASON RANKING 

With 64 teams entering post-season play, there’s not necessarily a lot of turnover in the field year-to-year. A few new entrants we’re projecting include Missouri, the most harshly-victimized team in last year’s selection process as Big 12 regular season champions and SEC team Tennessee. Some new representatives we’re projecting from mid-majors include James Madison, Cal Poly and Navy.

But it’s always a moving target and we’ll be updating the rankings every Monday on TopDrawerSoccer.com. Click here to see our opening offering of the ranking.