For the second season in a row and the fifth overall, the Kansas men’s basketball team will begin the year ranked No. 1 in the Associated Press’ Top 25 poll.
The Jayhawks, who received exactly half of the first-place votes from the 60-member panel, will look to convert that mark into a championship for the first time, after 2004-05 ended in a first-round elimination and 2009-10, 2018-19 and most recently 2023-24 all saw KU’s teams exit in the second round.
Last year’s team, which was debilitated by injuries, held the No. 1 ranking for the first three weeks of the season before losing to Marquette in the Maui Invitational. The Jayhawks managed to hang around the top of the poll at No. 2 through the start of the new year before a series of road losses in conference play set them back considerably. By the end of the season, they were just 19th, the lowest season-ending mark for the program since 1999.
But after losing to Gonzaga in Salt Lake City to end their season, the Jayhawks reloaded in the spring with transfer additions like Zeke Mayo, AJ Storr and Rylan Griffen and brought freshmen Flory Bidunga and Rakease Passmore to campus; they later bolstered their guard depth further with additional transfers Shakeel Moore and David Coit.
Returning talent includes KJ Adams and Dajuan Harris Jr., longtime starters whose time on the roster dates back to the 2022 national-title season, and center Hunter Dickinson, a second-team All-American last season and the Big 12’s preseason player of the year.
“We welcome being preseason No. 1, especially with our returning players like Hunter, Dajuan and KJ, and then you add the players we brought in,” KU coach Bill Self said in a press release. “The goal is to be No. 1 at the end of the season, and though we welcome this, it is not the end goal.”
Closely following KU in the poll is Alabama, Griffen’s former team that reached its first-ever Final Four last year and received 14 first-place votes. Reigning two-time champion UConn is third with 11 first-place votes, last year’s first-time Big 12 winner Houston is fourth with four and Big 12 tournament winner Iowa State is fifth.
Sixth-place Gonzaga earned the final first-place vote. The rest of the top 10 consists of Duke, Baylor, North Carolina and Arizona.
“To have three Big 12 teams in the top five and five in the top 10 just shows how competitive this league will be this season,” Self said in the release. “Every year we talk about the Big 12 being the toughest conference in the nation, and with the four additions, it became even stronger.”
KU has to face a significant share of the top 10 teams, including Houston twice, ISU twice, Duke, Baylor, North Carolina and Arizona. Elsewhere in the top 25 are No. 15 Creighton (which KU will play on the road in December), No. 16 Arkansas (which hosts KU for an exhibition on Oct. 25) and one more opponent of the Jayhawks’ in No. 20 Cincinnati.
AP Top 25
1. Kansas (30 first-place votes) – 1,449 points
2. Alabama (14) – 1,428
3. UConn (11) – 1,345
4. Houston (4) – 1,343
5. Iowa State – 1,177
6. Gonzaga (1) – 1,157
7. Duke – 1,154
8. Baylor – 1,109
9. North Carolina – 1,037
10. Arizona – 905
11. Auburn – 901
12. Tennessee – 775
13. Texas A&M – 737
14. Purdue – 678
15. Creighton – 631
16. Arkansas – 625
17. Indiana – 492
18. Marquette – 484
19. Texas – 332
20. Cincinnati – 271
21. Florida – 249
22. UCLA – 210
23. Kentucky – 191
24. Ole Miss – 132
25. Rutgers – 102
Also receiving votes: Illinois, St. John’s, Xavier, Texas Tech, Wake Forest, Kansas State, Michigan State, Ohio State, Michigan, BYU, Oregon, McNeese State, Miami (Fla.), Boise State, Saint Louis, Clemson, Providence, Mississippi State, VCU, Wisconsin, Saint Mary’s, Louisville, UAB, Arkansas-Little Rock, Grand Canyon, Arizona State, San Diego State, Princeton, High Point, Maryland.
AP Photo/Justin Rex
