Purdue is No. 1 in the preseason Associated Press men\u2019s college basketball poll for the first time. The Boilermakers earned 35 of 61 first-place votes to top…<\/p>\n
UNDATED (AP) \u2014 Purdue is No. 1 in the preseason Associated Press men\u2019s college basketball poll for the first time. The Boilermakers earned 35 of 61 first-place votes to top Monday\u2019s AP Top 25 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. Runner-up Houston was No. 2 while reigning champion Florida was No. 3. UConn was fourth, followed by St. John’s. Duke, Michigan, BYU, Kentucky and Texas Tech rounded out the top 10. The Southeastern Conference, Big Ten and Big 12 each had six ranked teams.<\/p>\n
UNDATED (AP) \u2014 Matt Rhule professed his love for living and working in Nebraska and trying to return the Cornhuskers to the upper echelon of college football. But he did nothing to shut down speculation he could be up for the Penn State job, which opened with Sunday\u2019s firing of James Franklin. Rhule has deep ties to Penn State. He met his wife there, was a walk-on linebacker for Joe Paterno in the 1990s and is close friends with athletic director Pat Kraft.<\/p>\n
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) \u2014 Pat Kraft wants to win national championships in Happy Valley. To try to do so, Penn State\u2019s athletic director made the toughest decision of his career. Penn State fired football coach James Franklin on Sunday after the Nittany Lions \u2014 who began the season ranked second \u2014 dropped three straight games, two in embarrassing fashion to unheralded teams. Fighting back tears at times, Kraft was emotional Monday as he took the podium in the Beaver Stadium media room just a few feet from the tunnel leading onto the field. It\u2019s where Franklin took his final walk after 11-plus seasons toward the locker room to jeers and obscenities after the team\u2019s sloppy 22-21 loss to Northwestern on Saturday.<\/p>\n
UNDATED (AP) \u2014 Indiana Hoosiers coach Curt Cignetti stuck to the game plan Monday. He quickly turned the page on the program\u2019s first road victory over a top-five team and didn\u2019t even bother to mention their new No. 3 ranking \u2014 the highest in school history. Instead, the brash, 64-year-old Cignetti took the business approach. Cignetti wants his players to understand Saturday’s game against Michigan State is just another game, albeit a trophy game. Hoosiers fans, naturally, see it a little differently.<\/p>\n
UNDATED (AP) \u2014 Texas Tech running back Cameron Dickey is The Associated Press national college football player of the week. Dickey ran 71 yards for a touchdown on the first play from scrimmage and finished with 263 yards and two scores on 21 carries in a 42-17 victory over Kansas. Dickey also ripped off a 55-yard TD run as well as bursts of 24, 23 and 20 yards. Washington quarterback Demond Williams Jr. is runner-up after throwing for 402 yards and two touchdowns and running for 136 yards and two TDs against Rutgers.<\/p>\n
SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) \u2014 No. 13 Notre Dame has lost starting center Ashton Craig for the rest of this season because of a knee injury. Coach Marcus Freeman announced the injury on Monday. Craig suffered the injury during last weekend\u2019s 36-7 victory over N.C. State. He has started all six games for the Fighting Irish this season. Joe Otting or Cam Herron are the two players Freeman talked about as Craig’s replacement against No. 20 Southern California on Saturday. Freeman also acknowledged negotiations are continuing between the two traditional powers to extend their annual rivalry beyond the 2026 season.<\/p>\n
UNDATED (AP) \u2014 Indiana has climbed to No. 3 in The Associated Press college football poll, marking its highest ranking ever. This comes after a 10-point win at Oregon. Ohio State and Miami remain the top two teams. Texas A&M and Mississippi have swapped places. Oklahoma dropped to No. 14 following a loss to Texas. The No. 21 Longhorns are back in the Top 25 after a one-week absence. Five teams dropped out of the ratings in the biggest turnover since seven fell out in an October poll in 2022.<\/p>\n
UNDATED (AP) \u2014 Indiana and Texas A&M would be top-four seeds in the College Football Playoff based on latest The Associated Press Top 25. Ohio State and Miami remain the top two seeds, with Indiana at No. 3 and Texas A&M at No. 4. Oklahoma’s loss to Texas caused the Sooners to fall off the bracket and be replaced by Tennessee. South Florida returned to the bracket after a win over North Texas. The Southeastern Conference would have six of the 12 teams on the mock bracket. The AP will publish brackets based on the weekly Top 25 until the CFP selection committee unveils its initial rankings.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Purdue is No. 1 in the preseason Associated Press men\u2019s college basketball poll for the first time. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,398,400,401,99],"class_list":["post-223798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaabasketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223798","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=223798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}