Through Oct. 31, Sports Illustrated will count down its preseason college basketball Top 25 with overviews of each team. Here are the full rankings so far.
UCLA’s first season in the Big Ten represented a pretty big bounce back from a miserable 2023–24, getting back to the NCAA tournament and winning a game while there. It was a group that mirrored many classic Mick Cronin teams at Cincinnati: tough, physical, grind-it-out hoops with just enough juice on the offensive end to get over the finish line. Outside of an ugly four-game losing streak in early January that featured a pair of Cronin press conference blowups, this was a very good basketball team … and a handful of key pieces are back for another year.
