Ranking the top 50 men's college basketball players at midseason - ESPN

When we ranked the top 100 players heading into the 2025-26 men's college basketball season, we made a point to take the incoming freshman class seriously.

For years, college coaches and NBA scouts had pinpointed this group of first-year players as transcendent, and we wanted to weigh that accordingly. And despite having three freshmen in our top six and 12 in our top 100, we were not even close to correctly valuing the class. We're making up for that oversight in our midseason rankings.

There are 13 freshmen in our top 50, including three in the top four and seven in the top 15.

What follows is not purely a ranking of the best players in men's college basketball; it's a ranking of players performing the best this season — with a little wiggle room to factor in what we're projecting moving forward.

Consider this essentially a 50-man All-America team. That's why you won't see some players who were ranked highly coming into the campaign but have since taken a step back in production, such as UCLA's Donovan Dent, NC State's Darrion Williams and Florida's Alex Condon.

Just like in the preseason, ESPN's Jeff Borzello and Myron Medcalf ranked the top 50 by creating their own lists then tweaking and changing the combined order until reaching a consensus.

No. 1 was not up for debate. Nor was No. 2. The rest? Fair game.

Note: All stats as of Monday, unless otherwise indicated.

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50-41 | 40-31 | 30-21 | 20-11 | 10-1

Louisville Cardinals | G | Fr.

Now that Brown is healthy, the freshman guard is worthy of a spot in the rankings. He was one of the best first-year players during the first 10 games of the season, averaging 16.6 points and 5.1 assists, with standout performances against Kentucky (29 points) and Arkansas (22