Maryland, Baylor and Louisville have been great-to-elite programs for a while now. I mean ... Baylor just won a NC two years ago. Maryland and Louisville have multiple FF appearances over the last decade.
It remains to be seen how good Oregon is going to be. Graves is a great coach, but a lot of their recent success had to do with recruiting, and specifically Ionescu taking a chance and going there when they were a nobody and she was a top 5 recruit. I could see Oregon WBB being similar to what Oklahoma was: they struck gold with some elite recruits that took a chance on them (Ionescu, the Paris sisters), made a couple FFs, but then they fizzle out because they can't keep their recruiting train going. I remember when Cal made the FF back in 2013 and everyone thought they were going to be the next big thing. They haven't done anything since then, and now they are horrible and one of the worst teams in the Pac-12. Texas A&M never became the elite program that people thought they would be after they won the NC in 2011. Maryland is a great program but people also thought they would be elite after 2006. They get to a FF here and there but haven't been a real contender for the NC in any year since then. It's a lot harder to maintain being a great, much less elite, program than it is to become one. Look how programs like Texas, LSU, Tennessee, UNC, Rutgers and Duke have fallen off over the last decade.
