The consensus around the college basketball world has been that Duke and Florida, in some order, will be the preseason No. 1 and No. 2 teams for next season. Most favor Todd Golden's Gators thanks to his unbelievable roster retention with key pieces from the 2025 title team, Thomas Haugh, Alex Condon, and Rueben Chinyelu all running it back in Gainesville.
But Duke certainly has a case, too.
Jon Scheyer paired excellent roster retention with the usual excellent recruiting and some key Transfer Portal additions. Duke brings back key players from last season's team in Patrick Ngongba II, Dame Sarr, Caleb Foster, and Cayden Boozer, added the nation's No. 1 recruiting class featuring 5-star talents in Cameron Williams, Deron Rippey Jr., Bryson Howard, and Joaquim Boumtje Boumtje, while landing one of the best overall portal players in Wisconsin guard John Blackwell, not to mention the under-the-radar pick-up of Belmont's Drew Scharnowski.
This might be Scheyer's best and deepest roster yet during his time as the head coach in Durham.
But while Duke and Florida are getting the most attention, there are other teams that will undoubtedly be in contention next year. One of those is even the No. 1 team according to our sister site, Busting Brackets.
In the updated Top 25 rankings from them post withdrawal deadline, Duke is shockingly in 3rd, behind No. 2 Florida and No. 1 Illinois.
Illinois beats out Florida and Duke for the No. 1 ranking, per Busting Brackets
No one would deny that Brad Underwood and Illinois have put together another strong roster. The Illini scored some major roster retention wins of their own with David Mirkovic, Andrej Stojakovic, and the Ivisic twins. They also added Providence guard Stefan Vaaks in the Transfer Portal in a major addition.
It feels like a stretch, though, to say that Illinois' roster is better than either Florida's or Duke's. You don't have to take my word for it, either. It's reflected in the current national championship odds.
Per FanDuel, Florida is the national title favorite with +600 odds to cut down the nets for the second time in three years. Duke is a close second at +700. Illinois is a distant fifth at +1600, also coming in behind defending national champion Michigan and UConn.
Odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.Â
There's certainly no shame in being No. 5 in title odds, but that's a better reflection of where Illinois should be ranked going into the season. There appears to be a pretty clear separation at the top between Florida and Duke, with everyone else fighting for third right now.
Busting Brackets may not reflect that in their rankings, but barring some major changes in the coming months, that's likely going to be how it pans out when the AP and Coaches release their preseason polls before the start of the season.
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