North Carolina sent shock waves around the country last season when a young talented program, led by first-year head coach Hubert Davis, guided a No. 8 seed in the NCAA tournament into a run to the national championship game.
The Tar Heels will not be catching anyone by surprise this time around.
With 80% of their starters returning from the team that fell to Kansas in New Orleans, the Tar Heels are the overwhelming favorite as the preseason No. 1 in the AP Top 25, made available Monday. They received 47 out of a possible 62 first-place votes from a national media panel, to surge past the Gonzaga Bulldogs, the top preseason men’s team the past two years.
The Bulldogs earned 12 first-place votes, while No. 3 Houston Cougars had one and fourth-ranked Kentucky Wildcats the other two.
“As they opened up their lockers for the first practice of last year, there was a picture of the New Orleans Superdome in there. I wanted them to see where we were headed in April,” Davis recalled last week. “The hard work and preparation, the practice that had to be put into place to put ourselves in position to do that. It’s the same approach this year compared to last year. The only difference this year is the outside noise.
“Last year,” Davis said, “the outside noise didn’t think we had a chance. The outside noise this year thinks we do.”
It is the 10th time in their program’s history North Carolina has been preseason No. 1, breaking a tie with their arch rival from seven miles away, Duke University, for the most in the storied history of the AP poll. But only a pair of times during those years did North Carolina go the national championship game, and only the 1981-82 team, with James Worthy and Michael Jordan, ultimately cut down the nets.
“Like Coach Davis always preaches, a lot of outside noise, and we don’t really worry about any of that,” said Caleb Love, one of the four returning starters for North Carolina along with R.J. Davis, Leaky Black and Armando Bacot.
“We just focus on our team,” Love said, “and us getting better each and every day.”
The Bulldogs will once again depend on Drew Timme to deliver coach Mark Few the title that has been eluding him for years. Houston has its highest preseason ranking since 1983, when the third of the Cougars’ Phi Slama Jama teams advanced to its second consecutive title game, where they lost to Jim Valvano and the North Carolina State Wolfpack. The Wildcats had their best preseason rank since 2019, when the season ended abruptly amid the pandemic.
There was a tie to round out the top five, with the defending champion Jayhawks, who raised their latest national title banner inside Allen Fieldhouse this month, and Big 12 rival Baylor, which raised its championship banner to the rafters the previous season.
Duke, where Jon Scheyer is taking over for Hall of Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski, will start the season ranked seventh and UCLA eighth. Creighton has its best preseason ranking at No. 9, followed by Arkansas, Tennessee, Texas, Indiana, TCU and Auburn.
“You don’t pay a lot attention to it when you’re picked ninth,” Bluejays coach Greg McDermott said. “You go to work every day and try to get better every day. It’s important we approach it the same this year.”
The No. 13 Indiana Hoosiers have their first ranking in the Top 25 since January 2019 and highest in the preseason since 2016.
Villanova, where Kyle Neptune is taking over for Hall of Fame coach Jay Wright, is No. 16, the lowest preseason ranking for the Wildcats since 2008. They were followed by Arizona, Virginia, San Diego State and Alabama. The final five are Oregon, Michigan, Illinois, Dayton and Texas Tech.
“When I was in school as a player, I never bought into the rankings, what the media would say about our ballclub. You still got to go out and play the game,” Hoosiers coach Mike Woodson said. “Hell, my senior year we were ranked No. 1 and we didn’t get it done. So at the end of the day, I guess it’s kind of nice for our players who haven’t experienced that. Again, you got to go out and play. I mean, you got to prove it on the basketball floor. That’s when it counts.”
The Big 12 and SEC lead the way with five ranked teams. The Big Ten, Pac 12 and ACC have three apiece and the Big East has two. The West Coast, Atlantic 10, Mountain West and American Athletic conferences each have one team in the poll.
Texas A&M was the first team outside the poll, followed by UConn, which appeared on 24 of 62 ballots. Miami, Purdue and Saint Louis also will be eyeing a spot in the Top 25 when the first regular-season poll is released Nov. 14.
The season begins for the majority of the teams November 7, but as usual, the first meeting of heavyweights will be the Champions Classic on November 15 in Indianapolis: No. 4 Kentucky plays Michigan State, unranked in the preseason poll for the second year in a row, before No. 5 Kansas plays No. 7 Duke in the nightcap.
