College basketball tipoff: Expert predictions for NCAA champion, conference winners, player of the year and more Yahoo Sports Staff November 3, 2025 at 10:51 PM 0 College basketball is back with loads of intrigue for the 202526 season. Plenty of veteran talent returns to lead national title hopefuls Houston, Purdue and Florida. And an exciting new crop of freshman talent projects to challenge for national player of the year honors and lead teams like Duke, Kansas and upstart BYU into championship contention.
- - College basketball tip-off: Expert predictions for NCAA champion, conference winners, player of the year and more
Yahoo Sports Staff November 3, 2025 at 10:51 PM
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College basketball is back with loads of intrigue for the 2025-26 season.
Plenty of veteran talent returns to lead national title hopefuls Houston, Purdue and Florida. And an exciting new crop of freshman talent projects to challenge for national player of the year honors and lead teams like Duke, Kansas and upstart BYU into championship contention.
Yahoo Sports' college basketball experts Jeff Eisenberg, Dan Wolken, Ryan Young, Nick Bromberg and Jason Owens have made their predictions for the season for conference winners, National Player of the Year, national champion and more.
Conference champions
After a classic national semifinal that saw Houston rally past Duke to advance to the national championship game, our experts like both teams to return to contention in 2025. Duke and Houston are unanimous picks to secure conference titles this season.
Cooper Flagg is gone from Duke, as are fellow first-round draft picks Kon Knueppel and Khaman Maluach. But Duke has reloaded yet again with the nation's No. 1 recruiting class, featuring player of the year candidate Cameron Boozer, the son of Duke great and former NBA All-Star Carlos Boozer. Expect the Blue Devils to challenge for the ACC title, Final Four and beyond.
Houston returns three starters from last season's national finalist in Emanuel Sharp, Milos Uzan and Joseph Tugler, who are all preseason All-Big 12 selections. After falling just short shot of topping Florida for the national championship, the Cougars look ready to challenge for the title again.
Our experts weren't quite as bullish on Purdue, who returns NPOY candidate Braden Smith from last season's Sweet 16 team. But four out of five like the Boilermakers to win the Big Ten.
Reigning national champion Florida, which returns preseason All-American Alex Condon, was picked by three out of five panelists to win what projects as another dogfight at the top of the SEC. And, per our panelists, it's a two-way race between Rick Pitino's St. John's and Dan Hurley's UConn atop the Big East.
Who will be lifting the trophy in April? (Mallory Bielecki/Yahoo Sports) (Mallory Bielecki/Yahoo Sports)No. 1 seeds
Accordingly, the predicted No. 1 seeds for the NCAA tournament come from the above-mentioned conference champion picks. Houston and Purdue are unanimous No. 1 seed selections, while Duke, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee and St. John's each got at least one vote to make the top line.
Neither of the panelists who picked UConn to win the Big East likes the Huskies to earn a No. 1 seed.
Coach most likely to get fired
A bloodbath is projected in the ACC, most notably in Chapel Hill, where alumnus Hubert Davis enters the season with perhaps the most pressure of any coach in the country.
Supported by Roy Williams to succeed him, Davis overcame a disappointing regular season in his 2021-22 debut to lead the North Carolina to a run to the Final Four and a win over Duke in the national semifinal before coming up short in the national title game against Kansas.
In the three seasons since, UNC has fallen from preseason No. 1 to out of the tournament and then failed to advance past the Sweet 16 in two straight campaigns. Davis' long leash will get considerably shorter if this top-25 team gets off to a slow start.
Virginia Tech's Mike Young and Syracuse's Jim Boeheim successor Adrian Autry are also among the picks to lose their jobs. Meanwhile, two of our panelists picked Bobby Hurley's 11-year run at Arizona State to conclude after two consecutive losing seasons and missing the NCAA tournament in five of the last six.
Mallory Bielecki/Yahoo Sports (Mallory Bielecki/Yahoo Sports)National Coach of the Year
On the other end of the coaching spectrum, there is no consensus among our experts for coach of the year. Michigan's Dusty May and Louisville's Pat Kelsey are projected to take their teams to the next level this season. Meanwhile, big things are expected from college coaching stalwarts Kelvin Sampson (Houston), Rick Barnes (Tennessee) and Pitino (St. John's).
Each of our five picks for coach of the year has built a roster that could win a national championship.
National Player of the Year
There's also no consensus player of the year favorite, and that's reflected in our picks. Among those picks are three freshmen in Boozer, Kansas guard Darryn Peterson and BYU forward AJ Dybantsa.
Boozer's the projected anchor of a No. 6 Duke team with national title aspirations. The preseason projections aren't as high for No. 19 Kansas, but Peterson — a big-time scorer — is likewise expected to lead the Jayhawks as far as they'll go.
And Dybantsa is perhaps the most intriguing candidate. A dynamic two-way forward who could be the No. 1 pick in next year's NBA Draft, Dybantsa spurned blue-bloods Kansas, North Carolina and Duke to play for BYU. The Cougars are subsequently ranked No. 8 in the nation and carrying aspirations of challenging traditional powers in the national title race.
Purdue's Smith and Texas Tech forward JT Toppin are the veteran picks to challenge the freshmen for NPOY honors. Both are returning All-Americans on teams expected to compete for a championship.
Smith leads the preseason No. 1 Boilermakers after averaging 15.8 points and leading the Big Ten for a second straight season with 8.7 assists per game in 2024-25. Toppin returns to challenge for a second straight Big 12 Player of the Year award after averaging 18.2 points, 9.4 rebounds and 1.5 blocks.
National champion
It's not unanimous. But our panel overwhelmingly likes Houston to finally break through for a national championship.
Sampson's Cougars have arguably been college basketball's most reliable performer over the last five seasons with five trips to the Sweet 16 and two to the Final Four, including last year's run to the championship game.
Houston's a consistent contender with a style centered on smothering defense and strong outside shooting that lends itself to March basketball. This roster that returns three starters should bring more of the same alongside plenty of March experience. Four of our five panelists like Houston to make its eighth Final Four and win its first NCAA title.
Duke, with its top-ranked recruiting class, is the fifth pick to win what would be Jon Scheyer's first championship as a head coach.
Source: "AOL Sports"
Source: Sports
Published: November 03, 2025 at 05:27PM on Source: KOS MAG
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