Travbowman's Week Pre-Season Ballot

Rank	Team	Reason
1	Houston	Lost Shead, but bringing pretty much everyone back from a top 5 team.
2	Kansas	Good mix of returning players, transfers, and experience. Shooting should get better?
3	Duke	Talent is there, only real question is at PG
4	Alabama	I trust Oats at this point
5	Iowa State	Returning a lot of talent from a really good team from last year
6	Gonzaga	A lot of guys back from a team that was hot from February on last year
7	UConn	What's left to say about them? They keep winning all the friggin time
8	Auburn	Fantastic team. Weird that they haven't gotten out of the first weekend of March since 2019
9	Arizona	Similar to Auburn. Keep winning in regular season, keep underperforming their seed in March
10	Baylor	If they could just play some defense consistently, sheesh they'd be scary
11	North Carolina	Should challenge Duke for ACC supremecy
12	Tennessee	Barnes is a winner.
13	Creighton	Not as good as the past couple of seasons but still a strong team
14	Purdue	Obviously will take a step back after losing Edey but still going to be a strong roster in a depleted B1G
15	Texas	So many changes, so much talent in SEC.
16	St. John's	Pitino is back baby
17	Texas A&M	Buzz buzz
18	Texas Tech	6 seed in Big 12 tournament is still top 20 in country. Oy.
19	Marquette	Losing Kolek is big. Still a solid team
20	Cincinnati	7 seed in Big 12 tournament is still top 20 in country. Oy.
21	Florida	Preseason Florida hasn't been as good as regular season Florida for a few years. This changes now, right?
22	Xavier	Miller can coach and this team has depth and experience
23	Illinois	Lose a lot, bring in a lot. Should still be good?
24	UCLA	I'm assuming last year was the blip. If they stumble again though, Cronin is dead to me.
25	Grand Canyon	Best non-Gonzaga mid major deserves a slot until proven otherwise

Overall Rationale

Just missed: Arkansas, Kentucky, Indiana, BYU, Michigan St, Rutgers, Wake Forest, Ohio St, Oregon