The preseason AP Top 25 poll was released Monday and to the surprise of nobody, Florida was No. 1 followed by Duke, Illinois and UConn (in that order). That's the same top four as the Top 25 And 1. Again, there's nothing surprising about the top four of the AP poll -- or anything else in it, really.
But it was interesting to see Kansas all the way down at No. 17, if only because there's no way the Jayhawks would've landed there had the news that Trey Kaufman-Renn had signed with KU hit before ballots were due. So KU will be No. 17 in the 2026-27 AP Top 25 preseason poll -- forever and always. But the Jayhawks are up to No. 5 in Version 29 of the 2026-27 CBS Sports preseason Top 25 And 1 college basketball rankings after adding, all in the past month, Tre White, Melvin Council Jr. and Kaufman-Renn via injunctions.
If you think of college basketball's offseason as a round of golf, nobody has had a better back nine than Kansas. Needless to say, I'll let Bill Self, the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame coach, make his own starting lineup. But considering Kaufman-Renn played a lot of five for a Purdue team that made the Sweet 16 in 2025, one option is this: That hypothetical starting lineup features A) two five-star freshmen (Kinney, Stokes), among them the projected No. 1 pick in the 2027 NBA Draft (Stokes), B) two returning double-digit scorers from last season's KU team that advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament (White, Council), and C) a 24-year-old All-American-caliber frontcourt player who was the 59th pick of the 2026 NBA Draft (Kaufman-Renn).
Will the late additions make it challenging for Kansas to click early given most other schools have had their teams on campus and working together for months? Will the late additions create locker room issues given there are undeniably players on KU's roster who believed they would have bigger roles when they committed than they're now going to have on this team that looks way different than it did a month ago? Also perhaps -- and it should be noted that Purdue's Matt Painter, the man who recruited Kaufman-Renn out of high school and helped develop him for five years, didn't seem to seriously consider bringing TKR back for what would've been a sixth year on campus, largely because, in simple terms, he didn't think it was the right thing to do given what he'd already told other players about the roles they'd have on his next team.
But it's not one every coach shares -- and Self is clearly in the camp opposite Painter as it pertains to this topic. That doesn't mean one is right and the other is wrong, by the way, at least not in my mind. I could argue either position convincingly, I think.
Either way, KU's roster now looks awesome on paper, any hurt feelings be damned. The Jayhawks open the regular season with Fordham in less than two weeks. Their first game against a team also in the Top 25 And 1 will come eight days later against No. 19 Kentucky in the Champions Classic at the United Center in Chicago.
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