With the men’s college basketball season just three weeks away, the Associated Press released its preseason top 25 poll Monday. For the second straight year, the Kansas Jayhawks will enter the season as preseason No. 1, earning 30 out of 60 votes for the top spot to edge out the Alabama Crimson Tide and two-time defending champion UConn Huskies. Other highlights from the poll included Cooper Flagg and the Duke Blue Devils picked at No. 7 and John Calipari’s Arkansas Razorbacks landing at No. 16.
Here’s a look at some notable takeaways from the poll:
It was a tad surprising to not see deference given to the back-to-back national champions for the top spot. UConn (No. 3, 11 first-place votes) has dominated the sport in consecutive seasons, especially in March, and even after sustaining heavy roster losses, the Huskies expect to be in serious title contention yet again. Kansas is a worthy No. 1 with Hunter Dickinson back and a loaded incoming transfer class, but you can guarantee that Dan Hurley will use this perceived snub to motivate his team. UConn heads to the loaded Maui Invitational at Thanksgiving, and a sweep there could remove any lingering doubts about the Huskies’ three-peat hopes.
The Big 12 has been KenPom’s top-rated conference in eight of the last 10 years and has only gotten stronger with conference realignment, adding a pair of top-tier basketball programs in Houston and Arizona in the last two years. This could be an all-time year for the league if preseason prognosticators are correct, with the AP ranking five Big 12 squads in its top 10 and three in the top five. Kansas tops the poll, with No. 4 Houston, No. 5 Iowa State, No. 8 Baylor and No. 10 Arizona rounding out the Big 12-centric top 10. Beyond that loaded top five, Cincinnati checks in at No. 20 while Texas Tech, Kansas State, BYU and Arizona State all received votes.
The Big 12 dominated the top of the poll, but no league had more teams in the preseason top 25 than the SEC. A whopping nine SEC teams cracked the top 25, topped by Alabama at No. 2 nationally. New Kentucky head coach Mark Pope’s Wildcats snuck into the poll at No. 23, though the voters showed more love to former Kentucky coach John Calipari at Arkansas. Over half of the 16-team league seeing its name in the preseason top 25 is yet another marker of the league’s growth on the hardwood. The number is especially remarkable considering we’re less than a decade removed from the end of a stretch during which the SEC got just three teams into the NCAA tournament in three out of four years.
The Big Ten looks extraordinarily wide-open this season, with preseason KenPom rankings featuring all 18 Big Ten teams in the top 75 nationally. But even with two-time National Player of the Year Zach Edey gone to the NBA, voters gave love to defending national runner-up Purdue, ranking the Boilermakers No. 14 nationally, highest in the Big Ten. The Boilermakers return star point guard Braden Smith and several other role players from last season’s team, but losing the sport’s most dominant player will make repeating as Big Ten champs a challenge. Indiana at No. 17 was the second-highest Big Ten team in the poll, while UCLA and Rutgers were also ranked.
There’s plenty of intrigue at Rutgers, where the nation’s top-rated small forward (Ace Bailey) and point guard (Dylan Harper) in the Class of 2024 have teamed up. It’s a non-traditional place for two elite future NBA talents, to say the least, given the last time Rutgers had a player drafted was before Bailey was born. It’s hard for freshmen-driven teams to win in college basketball, but these two are dynamic talents who have a chance to lift Rutgers to a special season.
