The defending national champion is the preseason favorite, which is the least surprising sentence in college basketball right now.
Andy Katz released his first Power 44 rankings on Wednesday with Florida at No. 1. The Gators won the 2026 national title and return as the team everyone else is measured against.
The Top 10
Katz has it: Florida, Duke, Michigan State, Illinois, UConn, Arizona, Tennessee, Texas, Arkansas, Vanderbilt.
Vanderbilt at No. 10 is the eyebrow-raiser, and Arkansas at nine is close behind. Four SEC teams in the top 10, five if you count Tennessee and Arkansas and Vanderbilt and Florida separately from Texas, which also plays in that league now. The SEC has become what the ACC used to be.
Why the List Grew to 44
Katz expanded from 36 teams to 44 for a specific reason. The NCAA tournament field grows from 68 to 76 teams in 2026-27, and 44 is the number of at-large bids available.
So the Power 44 is now a ranking of exactly as many teams as can get in without winning a conference tournament. That is a smarter framing than an arbitrary top 25, and it tells you how much the postseason math has changed.
The Eligibility Fights Are the Real Story
Here is what could scramble all of this. The NCAA has refused blanket fifth-year waivers for hundreds of seniors, and multiple court cases are pending. The Tenth Circuit stayed a Colorado blanket eligibility ruling in the NCAA’s favor.
The consequences are concrete. Iowa State’s Tamin Lipsey, who averaged 13.3 points and 5.1 assists, is the difference between a top-15 projection and a 22-to-25 range for the Cyclones. One player, roughly ten spots.
St. John’s is waiting on clearance for Quinn Ellis, and Babacar Sane had an appeal hearing on Oct. 1. Texas A&M’s Jordan Pope and Rylan Griffen had injunction hearings in late September. CBS described Texas A&M as having ridiculous depth up and down the lineup if its players are cleared.
The Big 12 has 16 potential fifth-year seniors seeking eligibility, the most of any high-major conference. An entire league’s competitive balance is sitting in courtrooms.
Why This Matters More Than Usual
Preseason rankings are always guesswork. This year they are guesswork layered on top of unresolved litigation, in the first season of both the five-for-five model and the 76-team field.
Miami’s Malik Reneau, who averaged 18.9 points and 6.5 rebounds, is among the players whose status appears in the same conversation, with Kansas also reportedly interested in his situation.
The eligibility reporting dates from mid-September and some of those cases may have moved since. Katz’s rankings carry no player-level reasoning, so the list is a judgment rather than an argument.
Florida is the right No. 1. Whether the teams behind it look anything like this list in November depends on judges rather than coaches.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.