What is the story about?
Well, here we are: the end of the regular season. It’s conference tournaments and the NCAA Tournament from here on out, and at the end of the 31-game march, there’s a trio of 29-2 teams at the top. Duke, Arizona, and Michigan all ran through their conferences with relative ease.
The Blue Devils lost to Texas Tech and North Carolina, Arizona lost to Kansas and Texas Tech, and Michigan lost to Wisconsin and Duke (though it’s probably a good thing the Wolverines didn’t play Texas Tech).
Currently, Duke
sits atop the pecking order, and if they win the ACC Tournament, they will likely stay there and head into the NCAA Tournament as the #1 overall seed.
Let’s run through the final AP poll of the regular season and break it down:
Notes:
- Miami-OH completed a perfect 31-0 regular season with their overtime victory over Ohio, 110-108. It’s the first unbeaten regular season since Gonzaga in 2020-2021 and Kentucky in 2014-2015 before that. Their reward? Getting dropped from 19th to 20th.
- UConn dropped two spots after falling on its face in its season finale at Marquette, which entered the game 11-19 and in last place in the Big East standings.
- Florida took full advantage of UConn’s loss, moving up to 4th and putting themselves in prime position to snag the 4th 1-seed come Selection Sunday. If they win the SEC Tournament, it’ll be really hard to give it to someone else.
- The top four seeds of the Big Ten Tournament are in the top 11 of the AP poll. It’ll be a stacked field in the United Center.
- Five ranked SEC teams made the final regular season poll and achieved the first five seeds of the SEC Tournament bracket: Florida, Alabama, Arkansas, Vanderbilt, and Tennessee. The Commodores leapfrogged the Vols in the rankings and the league standings in the regular season finale in Knoxville.
- Houston also has an opportunity to snag a 1-seed if they win the Big 12 Tournament, especially since Florida can’t play anybody as good as Arizona in the SEC Tournament.
