{"id":221863,"date":"2025-10-13T16:05:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T16:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/221863\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T16:05:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T16:05:07","slug":"purdue-tops-preseason-ap-top-25-poll-for-1st-time-ahead-of-houston-and-reigning-ncaa-champ-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/221863\/","title":{"rendered":"Purdue tops preseason AP Top 25 poll for 1st time, ahead of Houston and reigning NCAA champ Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

Purdue is No. 1 in the preseason Associated Press Top 25 college basketball poll<\/a> for the first time.<\/p>\n

The Boilermakers earned 35 of 61 first-place votes to top Monday\u2019s poll to begin the 2025-26 season. That put Matt Painter\u2019s squad ahead of the two teams that played in last year\u2019s NCAA title game<\/a>, with runner-up Houston at No. 2 and reigning champion Florida at No. 3.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are obviously excited to get the season going and being ranked No. 1 in the preseason is a great indicator of what we feel this team can accomplish,” Painter said. “But the goal is to be No. 1 at the end of the year. We\u2019re thrilled that people think this highly of our team, but there is a long ways to go and a lot of work to do to reach that goal in April.\u201d<\/p>\n

Purdue started a year ranked as high as No. 2 once before, in 1987-88 under Gene Keady.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s another milestone for Painter, the former Keady player who has built his own successful program that is still looking for its NCAA title breakthrough as he enters his 21st season. Purdue had never been ranked No. 1 in any AP poll before the 2021-22 season, which marked the first of three straight seasons in which the Boilermakers have reached the top. The last was during the 2023-24 season behind two-time AP national player of the year Zach Edey in a run all the way to the national title game<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Boilermakers reached last year\u2019s Sweet 16 before falling to Houston on a last-second basket<\/a>, but return a first-team AP All-American in point guard Braden Smith, scoring leader Trey Kaufman-Renn (20.1) and veteran guard Fletcher Loyer.<\/p>\n

The top tier<\/p>\n

Kelvin Sampson\u2019s Cougars earned 16 first-place votes to match the program\u2019s best-ever preseason AP ranking after last year’s finals run<\/a>. The other No. 2 appearance was by the 1967-68 team led by Elvin Hayes.<\/p>\n

Todd Golden’s Gators earned eight first-place votes to start this year with their highest preseason ranking since the last time they entered a year as reigning champions in 2006-07, the start of a run to a second straight title.<\/p>\n

UConn was next at No. 4 and earned the remaining two first-place votes. St. John’s was fifth, with Rick Pitino’s Red Storm surpassing the program’s previous best ranking in a preseason AP poll (No. 7 in 1984-85).<\/p>\n

Duke was next at No. 6, followed by Michigan, BYU \u2014 which landed the nation’s No. 1 recruit in A.J. Dybantsa \u2014 Kentucky and Texas Tech to round out the top 10.<\/p>\n

Quick transitions<\/p>\n

It hasn’t taken long for Pat Kelsey to get Louisville back among the national elite<\/a>, with the Cardinals checking in at No. 11 after a 27-win season to start his tenure. The Cardinals were 12-52 in the two seasons before his arrival.<\/p>\n

Louisville is one of five programs with a second-year coach in the preseason poll, joining Michigan, BYU, Kentucky and No. 14 Arkansas with John Calipari.<\/p>\n

Jayhawks lower<\/p>\n

Kansas checked in at No. 19, the lowest preseason rank for Bill Self’s Jayhawks since starting at No. 24 in the 2008-09 season as the reigning national champion. Kansas had been ranked outside the top 10 only once since that year (No. 13 in 2011-12) while starting at No. 1 in 2019-20 as well as each of the last two seasons<\/a> in that stretch. <\/p>\n

Pearl’s debut<\/p>\n

Auburn opens at No. 20 as it enters its first season since the unexpected retirement of coach Bruce Pearl<\/a> following last year’s Final Four run.<\/p>\n

Pearl stepped aside last month after 11 seasons, triggering a transition to his 38-year-old son Steven, who climbed his father’s staff through the elder Pearl’s Auburn tenure but has never been a head coach nor coached elsewhere in college.<\/p>\n

Conference watch<\/p>\n

The Southeastern Conference, Big Ten and Big 12 each had six ranked teams to make up 72% of the field. The Atlantic Coast Conference and Big East were next with three each, while the West Coast Conference had one with No. 21 Gonzaga. The Big 12 was the only league of that group to have three top-10 teams.<\/p>\n

Watch list<\/p>\n

Will Wade’s arrival at N.C. State<\/a> and subsequent roster shakeup has the Wolfpack as the first team outside the poll, sitting just three points behind 25th-ranked rival North Carolina from the ACC. Oregon is lurking close behind entering its 16th year under Dana Altman.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here<\/a> and here<\/a> (AP mobile app). AP college basketball: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll<\/a> and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-basketball<\/a><\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Purdue is No. 1 in the preseason Associated Press Top 25 college basketball poll for the first time.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,14118,8790,3077,23550,124781,124780,1089,8784,398,400,401,72167,14601,99,3346,795,94497,60521],"class_list":["post-221863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-bill-self","tag-braden-smith","tag-bruce-pearl","tag-dana-altman","tag-elvin-hayes","tag-gene-keady","tag-john-calipari","tag-matt-painter","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaabasketball","tag-pat-kelsey","tag-rick-pitino","tag-sports","tag-todd-golden","tag-u-s-news","tag-will-wade","tag-zach-edey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}