Kentucky is #1 in AP NCAA College Basketball Preseason Poll

With the calendar turning to November, the Next Big Thing is sports is the start of the college basketball season.  The Associated Press has announced its preseason poll and the Kentucky Wildcats, last year’s runner up in the NCAA Tournament, is ranked #1 with 52 first place votes.  Another team of Wildcats, Arizona, is second, and Wisconsin, who lost to Kentucky in a Final Four semi final is ranked third. Wisconsin actually had more first place votes (8) than Arizona (5).  Duke, Kansas, North Carolina, Florida (another Final Four team from last season), Louisville, Virginia, and Texas round off the Top Ten.  Defending national champion Connecticut is 17th.

Kentucky has made it a practice in recent years to bring in several players for essentially a year at a time, then replacing those freshmen with others the next season.  This has been criticized by those who think bringing in players who everyone knows really aren’t students makes a mockery of that whole “student-athlete” thing the NCAA always talks about.  However, only two Wildcats left the program early this year:  forwards James Young and Julius Randle.  Young went to the Boston Celtics, and Randle to the Los Angeles Lakers.  Incidentally, Randle had the misfortune of breaking his leg in the Lakers’ season opener and will miss the rest of the season; Young was injured in a car accident over the summer, but has recovered and is playing for the Celtics.  No doubt some players decided to return to not only enhance their chances of making it to the NBA, but also to take that final step and win an NCAA Championship.

So Kentucky has seven sophomores on the roster this season, and only four freshmen.  Of course, all four of those freshmen were McDonalds’ All Americans.  The Wildcats have three  seven footers on their roster, including junior Willie Cauley-Stein, a returning starter who was injured in Kentucky’s win over Louisville in the Sweet Sixteen and missed the rest of the tournament.  Kentucky opens the season in Lexington against Grand Canyon out of the Western Athletic Conference on November 14th.