College basketball rankings: Kansas earns No. 1 spot in preseason AP Top 25 poll ahead of Alabama, UConn

Kansas is ranked No. 1 ahead of Alabama and defending champion UConn in the 2024-25 preseason AP Top 25 men’s college basketball poll released Monday. The Jayhawks earned 30 of a possible 60 first-place votes to earn the honor for a second consecutive season.

Alabama earned 14 first-place votes and ranks No. 2 in the preseason. UConn and Houston earned 11 and four first-place votes, respectively, and rank No. 3 and No. 4. Gonzaga, ranked No. 6, was the only other team to earn a first-place vote with one. Iowa State, which ranked No. 5 in the poll, was the only top-five team to not earn any first-place votes.

Kansas has now been the preseason No. 1 team in college basketball five times since Bill Self took over the KU program more than two decades ago. KU struggled to validate its high expectations after being ranked No. 1 in the preseason a year ago, stumbling to a 23-win season and failing to make the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament for a second consecutive year after injuries and attrition throughout Big 12 play.

Self and his staff retooled in a big way in the offseason with one of the best transfer classes in college basketball to pair with returning big man and All-American Hunter Dickinson. Six of eight newcomers are via the transfer portal led by guards AJ Storr, Rylan Griffen and Zeke Mayo, all of whom were double-digit scorers last season at Wisconsin, Alabama and South Dakota State, respectively. 

The full top 25 can be found below along with thoughts and takeaways from the first poll.

Preseason AP Top 25

Also receiving votes: Illinois 92, St. John’s 91, Xavier 73, Texas Tech 58, Wake Forest 37, Kansas State 30, Michigan State 29, Ohio State 29, Michigan 19, BYU 14, Oregon 12, McNeese 11, Miami 11, Boise State 9, Saint Louis 9, Clemson 9, Providence 9, Mississippi State 6, VCU 6, Wisconsin 5, Saint Mary’s 5, Louisville 4, UAB 4, Little Rock 3, Grand Canyon 3, Arizona State 2, San Diego State 2, Princeton 2, High Point 1, Maryland 1.

Big 12 loaded at the top 

The Big 12 has rated as the No. 1 conference in college basketball at KenPom.com in each of the last three years and will be expected to continue that trend this season if the preseason AP Top 25 is predictive of how the season will play out. The league has three teams inside the top five — Kansas (No. 1), Houston (No. 4) and Iowa State (No. 5) — and a total of five teams in the top 10 with Baylor coming in at No. 8 and Arizona rounding out the top 10 at No. 10. Cincinnati also makes its first preseason appearance in the top 25 as a Big 12 school at No. 20. 

Kansas will be the favorite to win the league this year but reigning champion Houston, and even Iowa State, should be in the conversation to be considered co-favorites given how deep the league is and how much parity there likely will be. From top to bottom the Big 12 will be a gauntlet and the new additions of Arizona, Arizona State, Utah and Colorado should only burnish its rep as the toughest league in America.

UConn starts behind KU, Bama  

A year ago, UConn was coming off a national championship season and began the 2023-24 season ranked outside the top five. Its season ended with a dominant 37-3 campaign punctuated by double-digit wins in every NCAA Tournament game and validating its standing for a chunk of the season as the No. 1 team in the sport.

And here we are again — UConn again coming off a national championship season, and again UConn not getting the respect it deserves. Voters wised up a bit to put them inside the top five, but even No. 3 feels a smidge low considering just how dominant Dan Hurley’s team has been the last two seasons.

Tristen Newton, Cam Spencer, Stephon Castle and Donovan Clingan are all gone, so there’s some new faces and some unknowns about this iteration of the Huskies. But Hurley has Alex Karaban to build around, a five-star freshman in Liam McNeeley, a transfer star in Aidan Mahaney and stability returning with Jaylin Stewart, Solo Ball, Hassan Diarra and Samson Johnson all back. This team doesn’t have the same name recognition of the one from last year but the talent is here for it to still be underrated at No. 3. That says a lot about the state of UConn basketball right now.

Rutgers earns love thanks to talented freshmen

Rutgers is ranked No. 25 and in the preseason poll for the first time since 1978. The appearance is owed largely to the program-building of coach Steve Pikiell, who brings in the No. 9 recruiting class led by top-three prospects and projected NBA Draft lottery prospects Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey. 

“I’m excited about the expectations,” Rutgers coach Steve Pikiell told The Associated Press. “We always had high expectations, and now in a league with 18 teams, you know, people are saying, ‘How good are you? There’s 18 teams. They’re great coaches.’ I don’t know where we sit. If you came to our practice yesterday, you would say, ‘Oh, boy.’ And if you came a couple of days earlier, you might think, ‘Hey, they’re going to be pretty good.’”

Our experts picked Rutgers to finish ninth in the new-look Big Ten but there’s a lot to like about the Scarlet Knights and their prospects coming off a 15-17 season. They bring back leading scorer Jeremiah Williams to pair with Bailey and Harper and have quartet of transfers who could help fill holes and get things back on track after a losing season.