Florida No. 1 in preseason AP Top 25 men's basketball poll - ESPN

Florida will start the men's college basketball season where it ended it two seasons ago: No. 1.

The Gators were the overwhelming pick to top the preseason AP Top 25 on Monday, receiving 47 of the 59 first-place votes from a panel of national media. It is the first time that coach Todd Golden's bunch has resided on top since the final poll in 2025, after it had beaten Houston to deliver the school its third national championship.

«It's cool,» Golden said of the ranking, «but like, we've been No. 1 before. We won a national championship before. That's what I want our program to expect. That's what we want to kind of go into every season at.»

Duke received 10 first-place votes and was second in the preseason poll. Illinois received the other two and was third.

The Gators started last season at No. 3 but crashed out of the poll entirely by early January. They rallied to win the Southeastern Conference regular-season championship, only to get stunned by Iowa as a No. 1 seed in the second round of the NCAA tournament.

«We're more prepared this year for early-season expectations than we were last year,» Golden said. «We were kind of gathering ourselves, figuring [things] out for the first time, where this year we can use last year's experience to learn from.»

In an era of roster upheaval — some teams still don't know who will be eligible as court cases play out — the Gators have the benefit of experience on their side. Thomas Haugh, Alex Condon, Rueben Chinyelu and Denzel Aberdeen played on their national title team.

First-place votes in parentheses.

Aberdeen, back after a year at Kentucky, is among the players who've been granted another season of eligibility by the courts.

«We didn't finish the way that we wanted to last