College Basketball Rankings: Texas Men Open the AP Poll at No. 7, the Women at No. 6, With Florida on Top
The season's first AP Top 25 is out: Florida keeps No. 1 with 53 first-place votes, Duke and Illinois follow, and Texas places both of its teams in the top seven — the men at No. 7 and the women at No. 6.
AUSTIN — The first regular-season Associated Press college basketball rankings landed Monday, and they read well in Austin: the Texas men's team is No. 7 in the AP Top 25 at 2-0, and the Texas women hold No. 6 in their poll, also at 2-0.
On the men's side, Florida solidified the No. 1 ranking with 53 first-place votes, followed by Duke (7 first-place votes), Illinois, UConn and Michigan State, with Virginia sixth and Texas seventh, according to the full poll published by USA TODAY. Houston gives the state a second top-10 team at No. 8, UCLA is ninth and Louisville tenth, and Texas Tech sits at No. 16. The week's fallers were Arizona, down to No. 12, and Michigan, down to No. 20, after 1-1 starts.
The women's poll kept South Carolina at No. 1 with 32 of 33 first-place votes, but Michigan's upset of UConn reshaped the top: Michigan rises to No. 2, USC is third, and UConn falls to No. 4 ahead of Duke. Texas holds No. 6 in both the AP poll and the Coaches Poll, behind the Gamecocks' 15 ranked opponents on their schedule — a measure of how loaded the Longhorns' own road will be.
For the Texas men, the ranking meets a live test tonight: No. 7 Texas hosts Grambling State at the Moody Center, chasing a third straight rout to open the season, as this station previewed this morning. The polls are a snapshot of one week — but as opening positions go, Austin's two teams start the season exactly where they intend to finish it: in the top ten, in both games.
