Florida Is A Runaway No. 1 In The Preseason AP Top 25; Defending Champion Michigan Starts 16th

Florida is the runaway No. 1 in the preseason AP Top 25, released Monday. The Gators received 47 of the 59 first-place votes and 1,461 points. Duke is second with ten first-place votes, Illinois third with the remaining two, then UConn fourth and Arizona fifth. It is Florida’s first preseason No. 1 ranking since 2006–07, and four of its five starters are back, including Denzel Aberdeen, who returned from Kentucky on a court-granted extra year of eligibility.

Head coach Todd Golden: “It’s cool, but like, we’ve been No. 1 before. We won a national championship before. That’s what I want our program to expect.” And: “We’re more prepared this year for early-season expectations than we were last year.” Forward Alex Condon: “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.” Florida went 16–2 in the SEC last season, took a No. 1 seed for the second straight year, and lost to Iowa in the second round of the tournament.

The defending champion starts in the middle of the poll. Michigan, which went 37–3 last season for a school record in wins, is No. 16. Head coach Dusty May left for the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, and four of five starters left for the NBA, among them Yaxel Lendeborg, Aday Mara and Morez Johnson Jr. The one returning starter is senior guard Elliot Cadeau. Michigan promoted May’s assistant and defensive coordinator Mike Boynton Jr. — interim in June, made full-time on July 10 on a two-year deal. Boynton coached Oklahoma State from 2017 to 2024, going 119–109.

The coaches’ poll agrees at the top: Florida is also No. 1 there, with Duke and Illinois in the same second and third spots, though the coaches put Arizona fourth where the AP has UConn, CBS Sports reported. Two streaks frame the bottom of the poll. Kentucky, at No. 23, is two weeks from becoming the first program ever to spend 1,000 weeks in the AP Top 25. Purdue sits just outside the poll, the third team among those receiving votes, which ends the Boilermakers’ run of 79 straight weeks in the Top 25 — the second-longest active streak in the country behind Houston’s 127.

The traditional powers start low. Kansas is No. 17, UCLA No. 22 and Kentucky No. 23, and North Carolina is not ranked at all — the Tar Heels received 20 points in the others-receiving-votes list. Kentucky, at No. 23, is two weeks from becoming the first program ever ranked in 1,000 weeks of the AP Top 25. Purdue fell out of the poll entirely, ending a run of 79 straight weeks ranked, the second-longest active streak behind Houston’s 127. No. 15 Gonzaga, now in the reassembled Pac-12, is the only ranked team from outside the power conferences.

By conference: the SEC placed seven teams, the Big 12 six, the Big Ten five, the ACC four and the Big East two. Behind Florida in the top ten: Michigan State sixth, Texas seventh, Tennessee eighth, Virginia ninth and Houston tenth.

The season opens Sunday, November 1, in Rome, where Notre Dame plays Villanova in the Eternal City Tip-Off at 9:30 a.m. Eastern on FOX. The marquee game of opening week follows on November 2 in Las Vegas: No. 5 Arizona against No. 22 UCLA.