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The Florida Gators will begin the upcoming men's college basketball season ranked No. 1 in the Associated Press Top 25 preseason poll, marking their return to the top spot for the first time since the final poll of the 2025 season, when they captured the national championship by defeating Houston.
Florida secured 47 of the 59 first-place votes from a national media panel, making them the overwhelming choice for the top ranking. Duke received 10 first-place votes and landed at No. 2, while Illinois garnered the remaining two first-place votes and placed third.
Head coach Todd Golden acknowledged the ranking but emphasized that his program expects this level of success. "It's cool," Golden said, "but like, 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."
Last season, the Gators started at No. 3 but fell out of the poll entirely by early January. They rebounded to win the Southeastern Conference regular-season title, only to be upset by Iowa as a No. 1 seed in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
Golden believes his team is better equipped to handle early-season expectations this time around. "I think we're more prepared this year for early-season expectations than we were last year," he 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—with some teams still uncertain about player eligibility due to ongoing court cases—the Gators benefit from experience. Thomas Haugh, Alex Condon, Rueben Chinyelu and Denzel Aberdeen all played on the national title team. Aberdeen, who returned after a year at Kentucky, is among those 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 and Illinois Round Out Top Three
Duke's No. 2 ranking matches its highest preseason position since being No. 1 in 2017. The Blue Devils have 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 bitter taste. "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 core to complement 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' No. 3 ranking equals its best preseason position since 2001. The Fighting Illini return five of their top eight scorers, led 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, complete the top five. The remainder of the top 10 includes Michigan State, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia and Houston. Louisville, Arkansas, St. John's, Miami and Gonzaga occupy spots 11-15, while Michigan, Kansas, Iowa State, Texas Tech and Alabama are 16-20. The final five are USC, UCLA, Kentucky, Vanderbilt and BYU.
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 Tournament 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 alter the Jayhawks' fortunes come March.
Kentucky is making its 998th appearance in the poll and will become the first program to reach 1,000 in two weeks. Vanderbilt, which finished 19th last year, is ranked in the preseason Top 25 for the first time since 2015, while BYU is back despite losing one-and-done phenom A.J. Dybantsa, the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA draft.
Others Receiving Votes
Missouri is the top team outside the Top 25 and could break in soon. All-SEC forward Mark Mitchell was granted an injunction last week to play another season, joining 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 is next-best, while Purdue received plenty of votes but not enough to avoid ending its streak of 79 consecutive weeks in the poll—the second-longest active streak behind Houston's 127 and counting.
Originally reported by tribtoday.