Blue Devils hang on to No. 1 spot

Duke is No. 1 in the first regular-season Associated Press poll of 2017-18.

The Blue Devils were No. 1 in the preseason poll and received 34 of 65 firstplace votes from a national media panel in the AP Top 25 released Monday after winning their first two games. No. 2 Michigan State received 13 first-place votes, No. 3 Arizona got 16 and No. 4 Kansas had 2. Duke had 33 first-place votes in the preseason poll.

Villanova moved up one spot to No. 5, with Wichita State, Kentucky, Florida, North Carolina and USC rounding out the top 10.

Duke was the preseason No. 1 for the second straight season and ninth time overall, matching North Carolina for the most of all time.

The Blue Devils opened the season with convincing wins over Elon and Utah Valley, giving coach Mike Krzyzewski 1,000 victories with the program. He became the first Division I coach to reach 1,000 wins overall in 2015.

Vandy signs Garland: Vanderbilt coach Bryce Drew landed the highest-rated recruit in the Commodores’ history with point guard Darius Garland signing his letter of intent for 2018.

The 6-foot-2 point guard from Brentwood Academy in Tennessee is a unanimous five-star recruit and rated a consensus top-10 player by several recruiting services for the Class of 2018. Garland visited Indiana, Kentucky and UCLA before choosing to stay close to home at Vanderbilt.

Alabama coach Avery Johnson signed three fourstar recruits. The Crimson Tide coach announced the signing of guards Jared Butler and Diante Wood and center Javian Fleming.

Capel Jr. dies: Former Old Dominion and Fayetteville State coach Jeff Capel Jr. died less than two years after being diagnosed with ALS. He was 64.

Fayetteville State Chancellor James A. Anderson said family members told him of Capel’s death and called him one of the school’s “most respected alumni and former coaches.”

Capel was diagnosed with ALS in the spring of 2016 by doctors at Duke University — where his son Jeff Capel III is the associate head coach. AP