Everyone loves to hate on it. Every October, social media turns into a battlefield the second the Associated Press drops its rankings. Fans of teams sitting at 26th or 27th lose their minds, claiming a "disrespect" narrative that fuels locker room speeches for months. But honestly? The ap preseason basketball poll is the most influential piece of paper in college sports before a single sneaker squeaks on a hardwood floor. It sets the baseline. It creates the "Top 25" matchups that ESPN promotes for November. If you aren't on that initial list, you're basically invisible until you pull off a massive upset in the Maui Invitational.
It’s kind of wild how much weight we give to a bunch of sportswriters guessing how teenagers will play together. You’ve got 60+ voters from across the country—people who cover these teams daily—trying to project how a 19-year-old transfer from the portal will mesh with a five-star freshman who hasn't even taken a mid-term yet. It's guesswork. Educated guesswork, sure, but guesswork nonetheless.
The Gravity of the Number One Spot
Being preseason Number 1 is a blessing and a curse. Take North Carolina in 2022. They were the darlings of the ap preseason basketball poll after that magical run to the title game the year before. They returned almost everybody. The voters saw "continuity" and "experience" and hammered them into the top spot. Then? Disaster. They became the first preseason #1 to miss the NCAA tournament entirely since the field expanded to 64 teams. It was a historic collapse that proved just how much the poll can be a trap.
Voters often fall into the "recency bias" trap. If a team ended hot in March, we assume they’ll start hot in November. But college basketball isn't a continuous loop anymore; it’s a series of one-year contracts. The transfer portal has turned the ap preseason basketball poll into a total crapshoot. How do you rank a team like Arkansas or Kentucky when 80% of the roster met each other for the first time in June?
How the Voting Actually Works (It’s Not a Secret Society)
The process is actually pretty transparent, though fans act like it’s a smoke-filled room in a basement. The AP selects journalists from various markets—big East Coast cities, small Midwest college towns, and everywhere in between. Each voter submits their own Top 25. A first-place vote is worth 25 points, a second-place is 24, and so on down to 1 point for 25th.
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The math is simple. The drama is not.
Sometimes you get "outlier" voters. You’ll have one person who thinks a mid-major like Gonzaga or Saint Mary's should be top five, while another voter has them at 22. These discrepancies are what make the ap preseason basketball poll so fascinating. It’s a collective consciousness. It represents the "consensus" of the sport, which is usually right about the elite teams but hilariously wrong about the middle of the pack.
Why the "Others Receiving Votes" Section Matters
Don't ignore the fringe. Usually, the team that actually makes the Final Four as an underdog is buried in the "Others Receiving Votes" section in October. Think about the 2023-2024 season. Teams like Iowa State or South Carolina weren't exactly headlining the preseason Top 10. They had to earn their way in. The poll acts as a gatekeeper. If you start at #5, you can lose a game and only drop to #12. If you start unranked, you have to win ten straight just to crack the Top 20. It's an unfair advantage, basically.
The Portal Problem and the Death of "Returning Starters"
We used to look at "returning starters" as the gold standard for ranking teams. If a team had three seniors back, they were a lock for the Top 15. That world is dead. Now, a coach like John Calipari or Bill Self can build a "preseason Top 5" team entirely out of three grad transfers and a couple of NBA prospects.
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This makes the ap preseason basketball poll incredibly volatile.
- Voters have to track players moving from the Sun Belt to the Big 12.
- Injuries in secret scrimmages (which aren't supposed to be public but always leak) change rankings 48 hours before the poll drops.
- NIL deals keep players in school who would have gone pro five years ago, bloating the talent pool at the top.
Real-World Impact: More Than Just Bragging Rights
Why does this matter for your Monday morning? TV slots. The networks—ESPN, FOX, CBS—use the ap preseason basketball poll to schedule their "Marquee Matchups." If you're ranked in the preseason, you get the 7:00 PM slot on ESPN. You get the hype videos. You get the recruiting advantage because recruits want to play for "Top 10 programs."
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. A team gets ranked high, gets more exposure, wins a few games against other "ranked" teams (who might also be overrated), and stays in the Top 10 all year. Meanwhile, a really good team in the Mountain West or the A-10 might be 12-0 and still be stuck at #24 because the "quality of wins" isn't there—according to the poll.
The Blue Blood Bias
Let's be real. Kansas, Duke, Kentucky, and North Carolina start with a 10-point lead in the polls. It's just facts. Even in a "down" year, voters are hesitant to leave Duke out of the Top 25. There's a built-in trust that these programs will figure it out. Sometimes that trust is earned (Bill Self almost always figures it out). Sometimes, it’s just lazy.
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Spotting the Overrated Teams This Year
When you're looking at the ap preseason basketball poll, look for the "continuity trap." Be wary of teams that returned everyone but didn't actually win anything significant the year before. If a team went 20-13 and returns their whole roster, why are we ranking them 8th? They were a 20-win team for a reason.
Also, watch out for the "One Big Name" team. If a team is ranked #15 because they landed the #1 recruit in the country, be careful. Freshman-heavy teams have struggled immensely in the age of 23-year-old "super-seniors." The poll often favors the shiny new toy over the grizzled, boring veteran squad from the Big Ten.
Actionable Strategy: How to Use the Poll Like an Expert
If you actually want to use the ap preseason basketball poll for something other than arguing on Reddit, use it as a "fade" list.
- Identify the "Sticky" Teams: Look for teams ranked 15-25 that have veteran guards. These teams usually rise.
- The January Correction: Mark your calendar for the second week of January. That’s when the "preseason" influence finally wears off and the "actual performance" takes over.
- Track the Movement: If a team drops from #4 to #18 in three weeks, don't assume they suck. The poll overreacts to early-season neutral-site losses. That’s often the best time to "buy low" on a team's potential.
The poll isn't a crystal ball. It’s a snapshot of the sport's collective expectations. It tells us what we think will happen, which is almost never what actually happens once the ball is tipped in November.
Final Reality Check
The AP Poll is a legacy brand. In an era of NET rankings, KenPom, and BartTorvik analytics, a human poll might seem outdated. But humans choose who makes the tournament. Humans seed the teams. As long as there's a human element to the NCAA Selection Committee, the ap preseason basketball poll remains the most important psychological benchmark in the sport.
To stay ahead of the curve, don't just look at the rank—look at the total points. A team with 1,500 points is a "unanimous" favorite. A team with 400 points is on thin ice. Use the point gaps to see where the voters actually have conviction and where they're just filling out a ballot at 2:00 AM on a Sunday. Keep an eye on the "mid-major" votes; when a team from a non-power conference starts getting Top 15 votes in the preseason, that’s usually a signal that the scouts know something the general public hasn't caught onto yet.