College basketball rankings: Polls have Duke, UConn, Kansas lead way-too-early top 25 for 2024-25

There’s a tradition unlike any other that comes around every year in the first two weeks of April — and, no, it’s not the Masters.

In the hours after a college basketball national champion has been crowned, after the confetti has fallen from the rafters and “One Shining Moment” has played on the videoboard, the look ahead begins with various outlets that cover the sport releasing their top 25 for the following season.

Even in a more stable time for college basketball, it was a challenging, often doomed-to-fail endeavor. After all, a team is seldom ever the same in April as it is by time the first game of the ensuing season rolls around in early November.

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In this day and age, it’s an even more fruitless exercise. About 1,500 players are in the transfer portal, a number that will only continue to rise as programs in every conference and every corner of the country look to remake their rosters. Players testing the NBA Draft waters have until May 29 to withdraw and return to school. Some standouts who plan on jumping to the next level have yet to announce their intentions. The coaching carousel is still active, with perhaps the biggest job in the sport, Kentucky, now open. Unless the Wildcats pluck a coach from the NBA or someone who’s currently out of the sport, their hiring will create a ripple effect across college basketball.

Much of that uncertainty won’t be cleared up for weeks, if not months, making anything resembling a well-informed prognostication incredibly difficult.

Nonetheless, it’s a subject of intense interest for basketball-starved fans who are coming off the exhilaration three weeks of NCAA Tournament action, but are suddenly confronted with the reality of no games for the next seven months.

With the 2023-24 season now officially in the books after UConn’s 75-60 victory against Purdue in the national championship game of the 2024 NCAA Tournament, here’s some of…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/college-basketball-rankings-polls-duke-100730162.html

Author : Detroit Free Press

Publish date : 2024-04-09 10:07:30

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