Kansas is ranked No. 1 in preseason poll; St. Mary’s No. 23
Bill Self likes to remind his team that the faces may change at Kansas but the expectations within his program never do.
Expectations outside the program? Turns out they are as high as possible this year.
The Jayhawks were the clear No. 1 pick in the AP Top 25 preseason men's basketball poll released Monday, earning 46 of 63 first-place votes to easily outdistance No. 2 Duke and No. 3 Purdue. It's the third time since Self's arrival in Lawrence in 2003 that his team will start the season on top but the first time since the 2018-19 season.
“You know you'll have a target on your back playing at Kansas,” said Kevin McCullar Jr., who decided to return for a second season with the Jayhawks and fifth in college hoops. "We'll have that chip on our shoulder,
you know, prove everybody wrong, and state why you should be the No. 1 team in the nation. You go out there and use that. You use that as fuel every day.”
St. Mary's is No. 23 in the first poll, while the Pac-12's
Arizona is No. 12 and USC is No. 21.
The Jayhawks had a disappointing follow-up to their 2022 national title last season, losing to Texas in the Big 12 championship and falling to Arkansas in
the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament. Self missed both of those events after having a valve in his heart replaced, but the 60year-old coach is back on the sideline and chasing a third national title in the 75th anniversary season of the AP poll.
He has three returning starters in McCullar, DaJuan Harris Jr. and KJ Adams, along with top-50 recruit Elmarko Jackson and Michigan transfer Hunter Dickinson, perhaps the biggest prize of this past summer's portal moves.
“I think that this summer certainly put us probably ahead since we have so many new faces, even though our core still the same with one and K.J. and Kevin,” said Self, whose team played during a preseason tour of the Caribbean. “The chemistry is certainly one that I don't know that we're ahead of schedule, but they certainly seem to like to play off each other.”
Duke picked up 11 firstplace votes to land at No. 2 in Jon Scheyer's second season, and Purdue got three first-place nods as it tries to avenge a stunning end to last season. AP player of the year Zach Edey and the Boilermakers became the second men's No. 1 seed to lose to a No. 16 seed when they lost to Fairleigh Dickinson in the NCAA Tournament.