It's been 37 days since the start of the men's college basketball season – and what a wild opening it has been.
The freshman class quickly became one of the best in the history of the sport. The band is so good that Washington Hannes Steinbachaveraging 18.5 points and 12.8 rebounds, projected 21st overall in the draft. ESPN 2026 NBA Draft Mock.
The early screening also helped determine which preseason contenders pose a real threat to winning the national championship – see: Michigan victory over a team from the AP top 10 Gonzaga To 40 points during the holiday week, and which look more like contenders.
Despite all the chaos, it's clear that this season is showcasing some of the best basketball of this era. The best teams are really good. The talent pool is deep. Training at the highest level. And the atmosphere was amazing (this is not an invitation to rant about the Players Era Festival crowd).
We're heading toward what should be an incredible Final Four in Indianapolis, ten years after that. VillanovaThe team's Chris Jenkins hit the game-winning three-pointer at the buzzer to win North Carolina at the 2016 national championship. If the first month is any indication, the 2025/26 season could end with similar fireworks.
Here are the five most important lessons we've learned so far.
This freshman course could be the best in the one-and-done era.
Over four seasons from 2021/22 to 2024/25. KenPomFour freshmen took part in the final Player of the Year rankings: Chet Holmgren And Paolo Banchero in 2022, Brandon Miller in 2023 and Cooper Flagg in 2025. The same number of freshmen were included in this season's rankings.
This list starts with Cameron Boozer. DukeThe star has a higher offensive rating on KenPom than Flagg or Zion WilliamsonThe Blue Devils' last two national player of the year winners are coming off their award-winning seasons. At least for the first five weeks Boozer separated from the field with a thrilling effort for an undefeated Duke team.
Boozer is followed by a group of outstanding freshmen who deserve the same recognition.
BYU's AJ Dybanz was arguably the second best player in the country and a star at North Carolina. Caleb Wilson is leading a revival in Chapel Hill. The same return to normal is being prepared for Kansas and now that he's projected to be the No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft. Darrin Petersonreturned after a month out with a hamstring injury.
0:23
AJ Dybanza throws a jam with an exclamation mark in honor of BYU
AJ Dybanza goes to the basket in the open lane and throws a huge bunt for BYU.
Each of the top eight players in ESPN's 2026 NBA Mock Draft are rookies. This group does not even include such promising players as Houston's Kingston Flemings or Arkansas' Darius Acuff Jr..
In an era of unity, this team has a chance to be the best we've ever seen.
Florida, Kentucky and St. John's fell short of expectations
Three days after she suffered her worst scoring drought in eight years – a 10-minute, 25-second stretch in last week's loss to North Carolina – Kentucky missed his first 10 shots and lost by 35 points to Gonzaga in Nashville on Friday. To say the team ranked ninth in the preseason AP Top 25 is in trouble would be a huge understatement. The Wildcats are a mess, but they aren't the only preseason contenders looking for answers.
Months after winning a national title with an elite team of defenders, FloridaTodd Golden rebooted his backcourt with former Arkansas star Boogie Fland And Princeton broadcast Xaivian Li. Things didn't go as planned. In Florida's two-player lineups (a metric on EvanMiya.com that shows how teams perform when certain players are paired), the Fland-Lee combination ranked 26th on their team. And although Lee scored 19 points against University of California, Connecticut in Tuesday's game at Madison Square Garden, the loss was another example of the Gators' limitations when Lee and Fland (1 of 9 combined in 3 against the Huskies) aren't equally elite on the same night.
Ultimately, Florida still hasn't looked like a defending champion despite Thomas Ho (18.6 ppg, 7.6 rpg, 2.8 apg) plays like an All-American.
0:33
Thomas Ho had a huge jam in Florida
Xaivian Lee passes the ball to Thomas Ho for an epic 1-lane shot in Florida's game against UConn.
And after finishing second in adjusted defensive efficiency, defending Big East champion St. John's ranked 51st in the same category as of November 24, according to BartTorvik.com. Rick Pitino has signed several top transfers in the trade portal, but hasn't been able to provide the defensive integrity that helped his team earn an invite to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon a year ago. The Red Storm have now lost three games after finishing last season with just five losses.
Michigan, Iowa State and Arizona were much better than we expected.
After his colleagues were bombarded with questions at Big 12 media day, ArizonaThe team's Tommy Lloyd sat on stage in Kansas City, Missouri, and admitted his team's lack of interest at that point. — Are there any more questions? Is it true? – said Lloyd. “FINE.”
From there, Arizona shook up college basketball in October. The Wildcats moved into the AP Top 25 rankings for the first time since 2023 this week thanks to early wins over No. 5 YUKON, No. 18 Florida, No. 21 Auburn and No. 25 UCLA. Sensational freshman Koa Peas (15.9 points, 5.5 rebounds) leads the team averaging 88.5 points.
Two teams that weren't considered serious contenders in the preseason also managed to earn national recognition in just over the first month.
Michigan beat Gonzaga by 40 points in Las Vegas during Feast Week, capping a 3-0 run at the Players Era Festival with wins over San Diego State and Auburn too. Led by an All-American candidate Yaksel LendeborgThe Wolverines have the best defense in the country. And won six games by 25 points or more.
Joshua Jefferson (17.6 ppg, 6.7 rpg, 5.4 apg) and Iowa They also have dominant wins on their resume, including a real 23-point away win last Saturday over then-No. 1 Purdue. This is the best win of the season so far. The Cyclones also managed to force turnovers on 26.5% of their opponents' possessions, which was the best rate in the country.
All three teams fell outside the top six in the preseason AP poll—Arizona (No. 13) and Iowa State (No. 16) weren't even in the top 10. But these three teams looked like serious contenders for the national championship during the first month of the season.
The three-point revolution has reached an all-time high.
IN George Washingtonvictory with a score of 84-70 over Army On December 2, both teams combined to make 70 three-pointers. In the 2015 national title game Wisconsin and Duke combined to make 32 threes, or seven fewer than Army made last week.
While the importance of 3-point shooting in college basketball is not a new phenomenon, its rise in the first month of the 2025-26 season suggests that we could see a barrage of 3-pointers at an unprecedented rate. A then-record 121 teams made 3-pointers on at least 40% of their shots in 2021-22, up from 103 teams in the same category five years earlier, according to KenPom. Last season, that number rose again to a staggering 157 teams.
So far this season, at least 40 percent of all field goal attempts for 187 teams (more than half of Division I programs) have come from three-point range.
The game moves quickly in real time, and the first month has proven that with plenty of three-point attempts all over the area.
0:16
Alex Karaban hits an early three for UConn.
Alex Karaban hits an early three for UConn.
ACC… back?
The ACC sent a North Carolina team that finished 13–7 in conference play as its fourth and final NCAA Tournament berth of the season after finishing with just four bids for the first time in more than a decade.
Needless to say, it's been a couple of bad seasons for the ACC, but the conference is already starting to erase its recent woes. Yes, Duke is Duke. Boozer is the favorite to win National Player of the Year and is surrounded by a supporting cast that could help the Blue Devils win their first national title since 2015. This is not news. But here's what role other ACC teams could play in the conference's resumption.
Louisville (Mikel Brown Jr..) and North Carolina (Caleb Wilson) lead a pair of projected lottery picks. First-Year Head Coaches Ryan Odom (Virginia), Jai Lucas (Miami) and Will Wade (North Carolina State) can turn the tide for their teams this season. Overall, as of early December, five ACC teams rank in the top 25 in adjusted offensive efficiency.
This is a good sign.
The ACC finished last season with only five teams in the top 100 in the final KenPom rankings. There are already nine in the conference this season. It also had eight KenPom teams with fewer than 100 members at the end of 2024-25, the best indicator of the conference's overall strength (or lack thereof). There are only three ACC teams competing in this category this season.
With an increase in talent and new faces on the roster, the ACC has already shown that it is collectively poised for a better season than the previous two.
