Florida leads 6 SEC teams in preseason AP Top-25 men’s basketball poll
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The SEC tied the Big 12 and Big Ten for the most teams (6) in the first AP poll for men’s college basketball. Florida, the reigning national champions, earned the SEC’s highest ranking (No. 3) on the back of 8 first-place votes.
Gators head coach Todd Golden hit the transfer portal hard after losing the bulk of his title-winning guard rotation to graduation. Boogie Fland (Arkansas), AJ Brown (Ohio) and Xaivian Lee (Princeton) should make up a dynamic group of replacements on the perimeter. Together, with Rueben Chinyelu, Thomas Haugh, Alex Condon and Micah Handlogten, they will be competing for the SEC and national championships once again.
The SEC’s other top 10 team, the No. 9 Kentucky Wildcats, are entering their second season under head coach Mark Pope. The former BYU coach took Kentucky to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2018-19 last season. Like Golden, he loaded up his roster through the transfer portal. Jaland Lowe (Pittsburgh), Jayden Quaintance (Arizona State) and Kam Williams (Tulane) have fortified the operation around Otega Oweh — the Preseason SEC Player of the Year — and raise the Wildcats’ ceiling from a year ago.
Arkansas (No. 14), Alabama (No. 15), Tennessee (No. 18) and Auburn (No. 20) are the other SEC teams in the AP poll. Texas, sitting fourth in “others receiving votes,” tops a list of 6 more SEC schools in that category. You can see the full AP poll — with first-place votes in parenthesis — below:
- No. 1 – Purdue (35)
- No. 2 – Houston (16)
- No. 3 – Florida (8)
- No. 4 – UCONN (2)
- No. 5 – St. John’s
- No. 6 – Duke
- No. 7 – Michigan
- No. 8 – BYU
- No. 9 – Kentucky
- No. 10 – Texas Tech
- No. 11 – Louisville
- No. 12 – UCLA
- No. 13 – Arizona
- No. 14 – Arkansas
- No. 15 – Alabama
- No. 16 – Iowa State
- No. 17 – Illinois
- No. 18 – Tennessee
- No. 19 – Kansas
- No. 20 – Auburn
- No. 21 – Gonzaga
- No. 22 – Michigan State
- No. 23 – Creighton
- No. 24 – Wisconsin
- No. 25 – North Carolina
SEC teams receiving votes: Texas, Ole Miss, Missouri, Vanderbilt, Mississippi State, Oklahoma
