Baylor Basketball Tied with Kansas at No. 5 in Preseason AP Poll

Preseason polls and rankings have been released for college basketball and the Baylor Men’s basketball team came in at No. 5 in the AP poll, tied with fellow Big 12 powerhouse Kansas.

Last year’s runner-up and the team that bounced the Bears from the NCAA Tournament, the North Carolina Tar Heels, topped the poll with 47 of 62 first-place votes.

Gonzaga came in second with 12 first-place votes.

The Bears were not the top-rated team in the state of Texas even, with Houston earning 204 more points in the poll than Baylor, good for third nationally.

Elsewhere, Kentucky came in at No. 4, and Duke, UCLA, Creighton, and Arkansas round out the ten.

Other advanced metric rankings like KenPom and Bart Torvik have released their preseason rankings as well. These analytics-based models have Baylor at sixth and second respectively.

Texas and TCU out of the Big 12 are consensus top-15 teams according to these three rankings systems, and Texas Tech is in the No. 15-30 range.

The USA Today Coaches Poll has not been released yet.

Overall these rankings match up well with the Big 12 preseason coaches poll and general opinion heading into the season.

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