Florida runaway preseason No. 1
The same starting five that left the court in Indianapolis with Florida’s first national championship will start this season with the No. 1 ranking.
The Gators were the runaway choice Monday in the Associated Press’ preseason men’s college basketball poll – no surprise, since they have everyone back for a run at being the first repeat national champion since Duke in 1992.
Florida received 63 first-place votes and 1,788 points from the 72-member national media panel to easily outdistance North Carolina, which got the other nine No. 1 votes and 1,704 points.
“We appreciate and respect that people think this highly of our basketball team,” Gators coach Billy Donovan said Monday. “That being said, this ranking has everything to do with what we were able to accomplish last year and nothing to do with this year. We’re very honored to be the preseason No. 1, but at the same time, we fully realize we have a lot of work ahead of us.”
Some of that work comes early in the season with a game against third-ranked Kansas in Las Vegas on Nov. 25.
The last preseason No. 1 to win the national championship was Connecticut in 2004, and before that it was Kentucky in 1996.
Pittsburgh was fourth, matching its highest preseason ranking ever in 1987-88.
LSU, a Final Four team last season, and UCLA, which lost to Florida in the championship game, were fifth and sixth. George Mason, the first mid-major to reach the Final Four and the team the Gators beat in the national semifinals, received just one point, a single 25th-place vote.
Gonzaga, which lost to UCLA in the Sweet 16 and lost three key players, including national scoring champion Adam Morrison, didn’t make the preseason Top 25. The Bulldogs are among the list of others receiving votes, falling 74 points short of No. 25.
University of Washington is 17th.
Ohio State had what was considered the nation’s best recruiting class, though 7-foot-1 center Greg Oden won’t be available until January while he recovers from offseason wrist surgery. The Buckeyes are seventh, followed by Georgetown, Wisconsin and Arizona.
The last team to return all the starters from a national champion was Arizona in the 1997-98 season. The Wildcats, the preseason No. 1 the next year, lost to Utah in the 1998 tournament, a win shy of the Final Four.
Florida was the fourth team to win the title after not having been ranked in the preseason poll. The others were Texas Western (1966), Villanova (1985) and Syracuse (2003).
Duke was No. 1 in the final rankings after the last regular season ended. This marks the Blue Devils’ 186th consecutive poll appearance, the second-longest streak of all time.
UCLA was ranked in 221 consecutive polls from 1966 to 1980.