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The Florida Gators will begin the upcoming men's college basketball season exactly where they finished two seasons ago: at No. 1. The Gators were the overwhelming choice to lead the preseason AP Top 25, capturing 47 of the 59 first-place votes from a national media panel.
This marks the first time coach Todd Golden's squad has held the top spot since the final poll of 2025, when they defeated Houston to secure the program's third national championship.
"It's cool," Golden said of the ranking, "but we've been No. 1 before. We won a national championship before. That's what I want our program to expect. That's what we want to kind of go into every season at."
Duke garnered 10 first-place votes and is second in the preseason poll, while Illinois received the remaining two and is third.
Last season, Florida started at No. 3 but fell completely out of the poll by early January. The Gators rebounded to win the Southeastern Conference regular-season championship, only to be upset by Iowa as a No. 1 seed in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
"I think we're more prepared this year for early-season expectations than we were last year," Golden said. "We were kind of gathering ourselves, figuring things out for the first time, where this year we can use last year's experience to learn from."
In an era of roster upheaval—some teams still don't know who will be eligible as court cases play out—the Gators benefit from experience. Thomas Haugh, Alex Condon, Rueben Chinyelu and Denzel Aberdeen all played on the national title team. Aberdeen, back after a year at Kentucky, is among the players granted another season of eligibility by the courts.
"We didn't finish the way that we wanted to last year, so everyone's kind of got that in the back of their head as motivation," Condon said. "Times where we're struggling in conditioning at 6 a.m., we just went back to that, and I feel like we've talked about it a few times with the core group, how motivating it is the fact that we fell short."
Duke Matches Highest Preseason Ranking Since 2017
The Blue Devils matched their highest preseason ranking since being No. 1 in 2017, though coach Jon Scheyer knows the final ranking is what matters. Duke has won 70 games over the past two seasons—a school record for such a stretch—but losses to UConn in the Elite Eight and Houston in the Final Four have left a sting.
"I feel like any time I step on the court, I believe me and my teammates are going to win," said Dame Sarr, who along with Caleb Foster, Patrick Ngongba II and Cayden Boozer gives Duke a talented returning nucleus to go with its top-tier recruiting class. "I feel like we have a chance to win a national championship. It's just doing a better job this year."
Illinois Matches Best Preseason Ranking Since 2001
Illinois matched its best preseason ranking since 2001 and returns five of its top eight scorers—headlined by Andrej Stojakovic and David Mirkovic—from a team that made its first Final Four appearance in two decades last season.
UConn and Arizona, each coming off a Final Four trip, rounded out the top five. The rest of the top 10 consists of Michigan State, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia and Houston. Louisville, Arkansas, St. John's, Miami and Gonzaga were next.
Michigan, Kansas, Iowa State, Texas Tech and Alabama completed the top 20, while USC, UCLA, Kentucky, Vanderbilt and BYU were the final five in the Top 25.
Kansas features the nation's No. 1 recruit, Tyran Stokes, a year after Darryn Peterson brought the same billing to Lawrence for a frustrating season that ended with another first-weekend NCAA tourney exit. The late addition of all-Big Ten forward Trey Kaufman-Renn, a transfer from Purdue, coupled with the return of Tre White and Melvin Council III thanks to court decisions, could change those fortunes come March.
Kentucky is making its 998th appearance in the poll. Two more weeks and it will be the first to reach 1,000. Vanderbilt, which finished 19th last year, is ranked in the preseason Top 25 for the first time since 2015, while BYU is back in the poll despite losing one-and-done phenom A.J. Dybantsa, the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA draft.
Missouri Leads Teams Outside Top 25
Missouri is the top team outside the Top 25, though the Tigers could break in soon. All-SEC forward Mark Mitchell was granted an injunction to play another season, and he joins a roster loaded with veterans (Trent Pierce), elite transfers (Jamier Jones, Bryson Tiller, Jaylen Carey and Kennard Davis Jr.) and five-star freshmen (Jason Crowe Jr. and Toni Bryant).
Nebraska was next-best of the rest, while Purdue was among those receiving votes but not enough to avoid ending the Boilermakers' streak of 79 consecutive weeks in the poll. That was second-longest to Houston, which is at 127 and counting.
Originally reported by nbcsports.