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College basketball rankings: Kansas lands Michigan transfer Hunter … – CBS Sports
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Former Michigan star Hunter Dickinson publicly committed to Kansas on Thursday, giving Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame coach Bill Self one of college basketball’s best and most productive centers, specifically a 7-foot-1 senior who averaged 18.5 points and 9.0 rebounds in 32.7 minutes per game last season.
So a possible starting lineup for the Jayhawks now looks like this:
That’s a starting lineup with size, shooting and experience, one so strong that former top-35 prospects Arterio Morris and Ernest Udeh will likely begin games on the bench. It’s enough to compel me to move the Jayhawks to No. 1 in Version 10.0 of the 2023-24 CBS Sports preseason Top 25 And 1 college basketball rankings.
Simply put, trusting Self to be awesome is literally the safest thing you can do in this sport — evidence being how he’s guided his teams to 24 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances and earned No. 1 seeds in 10 of the past 16 NCAA Tournaments. On paper, he now has a roster good enough to win the 2024 NCAA Tournament. So, at this point, at least in my eyes, his Jayhawks should be considered the favorites to do it.
Are there other reasonable candidates for No. 1?
Of course.
Any of the other schools I now have ranked in the top five — UConn, Purdue, Marquette and Duke — are worthy of serious consideration, and I won’t be surprised if all of them get first-place votes in the preseason Associated Press Top 25 poll (provided their on-the-fence prospects who have entered the 2023 NBA Draft eventually withdraw and return to college). But, with Dickinson on board, my pick for a preseason No. 1 is now the Kansas Jayhawks.
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