Florida being preseason No. 1 is one of the few things college hoops experts agree on. Elsewhere, there's chaos.
We have been spending a good portion of this week diving into the transfer portal and how John Calipari of Arkansas needs more to lift the Hogs to a Final Four level. It seems abundantly clear that Florida will be preseason No. 1. Michigan and Illinois have retained a number of players for next season and have especially strong cases to make for being 2027 Final Four favorites. Duke getting Wisconsin's John Blackwell in the portal makes it hard to keep the Blue Devils off a Final Four favorites list. Arkansas, from just about any vantage point, is not a preseason top-four team as things stand right now. It would take another splashy portal addition for Calipari and UA to rise to that tier. That much seems clear.
The rest? It's chaos. The Field of 68 released its way-too-early preseason top 25. It's April, so there are plenty of portal developments still to come, but for the moment, this is one college basketball outlet's view of the power structure in the sport for next season.
It is striking, in looking at the Field of 68's list, that UConn is third with Tarris Reed gone. UConn will be a national player, but the Huskies looked ordinary for large portions of last season and now lose their interior anchor. They were down 19 points to Duke and frankly should have lost that game. Are they really a frontline Final Four contender without Reed? This could be a case of giving Dan Hurley a little too much credit.
Also surprising is Michigan State being No. 5 ahead of Illinois. Michigan State really struggled to score this past season. The Spartans beat Arkansas, but only barely, and at home. With Michigan and Illinois having, on paper, the two best rosters in the Big Ten, it seems hard to think Michigan State will crash that party. Tom Izzo hasn't been to the Final Four since 2019 and needs to prove he can get back to the top of the sport.
Another surprise is Miami checking in at No. 12. Jai Lucas is a good coach. Miami seems to have done really well in hiring Jim Larranaga's replacement. Miami had a great 2026 season and is obviously heading upward. However, 12 seems a bit high even with the roster improvements that have been made. You can see that Duke and Virginia are both in the top 10. If they live up to those top-10 rankings, Miami probably won't beat them and therefore won't be in the top 15.
Arkansas at 14 seems like a low ranking. The Hogs and Calipari have addressed the need for a frontcourt rotation player with Cooper Bowser, and for a shooter-scorer with Jeremiah Wilkinson. The star-studded recruiting class plays more defense than Darius Acuff did and offers real two-way balance. Arkansas has a better roster than what it had for most of this past season. A top-10 ranking seems about right for UA, though as we have established, this is not a Final Four team compared to Florida, Duke, Michigan, and Illinois.
North Carolina at 16 seems way too high, based on brand name rather than actual roster quality. Marquette at 25 is a shocker, given how horrible the Golden Eagles were last season and the fact that Shaka Smart is hostile to the portal in ways which scared off agents.
The view of college basketball's power structure beyond the top four is very unclear. It's up to Arkansas to do more in the portal and then develop players to earn trust when the season eventually begins.