{"id":252978,"date":"2025-09-25T06:38:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T06:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/252978\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T06:38:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T06:38:12","slug":"early-predictions-for-the-2025-26-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/252978\/","title":{"rendered":"Early predictions for the 2025-26 season"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are just six weeks away from the start of the 2025-26 NCAA men’s basketball season<\/a>, and less than six months away from Selection Sunday.<\/a> Though the campaign has yet to begin, March will be here before we know it, and it’s never too early to prematurely form theories about the way the season is going to unfold. <\/p>\n

ESPN<\/a> analyst and senior “bracketologist” Joe Lunardi, has been updating his bracket monthly since the conclusion of last season. With his latest edition coming with most rosters now finalized across the sport, it seems like it won’t be changing a whole lot before the season starts (with a few exceptions). <\/p>\n

So where does Kansas land in Lunardi’s forecast from September 23rd?<\/a> <\/p>\n

As of right now, the expert projects KU to be a 5 seed<\/strong> in the East, and to take on the 12 seed, which he currently has as the Liberty Flames.<\/p>\n

Unfamiliarly, this is the lowest seed that a Bill Self<\/a>-led team has been projected to obtain in the preseason since 2008-09. The official preseason AP Top 25 Poll<\/a> is still awaiting a release in October, but the speculation is that the Jayhawks will be ranked lower than most fans might be used to. Encouragingly as we’ve seen in recent times, preseason rankings don’t hold much weight in college basketball, and anything can happen once the action begins on the hardwood. <\/p>\n

Just for fun, we can take a look at the potential path for Kansas if they were to advance in Lunardi’s bracket.<\/p>\n

If the higher seeds were to advance in both round-of-64 matchups, the Jayhawks would take on fourth-seeded Auburn in the second round. Auburn just lost the greatest coach in their programs history earlier this week due to an unexpected retirement (Bruce Pearl<\/a>), but the Tigers (now led by Bruce Pearl’s son, Steven Pearl<\/a>) are still projected to be a force to be reckoned with in the SEC this season.<\/p>\n

If KU advanced to the second weekend for the first time since 2022, and all higher seeds held serve, they would face top-seeded Duke in the Sweet 16. A win in that one would set Kansas up for a date with the Michigan Wolverines in the Elite Eight (2 seed). Finally, if the Jayhawks were fortunate enough to advance to the 2026 Final Four<\/a> and National Championship game, they would have to endure a pair of heavyweight matchups against both 2025 national championship game participants and top overall seeds, Florida and Houston. <\/p>\n

Obviously, this is all hypothetical, and some of these teams won’t really make the noise that Lunardi is projecting at this point in time, and not all higher seeds are going to advance every round. Still, one thing is definite: Bill Self’s team is going to have to candidly turn some heads (and do so impressively) if they want to be crowned national champions in April. <\/p>\n

Lunardi will be updating his bracket more often once the season is underway, and bi-weekly once we get to conference play. Until then, we’ll keep an eye on all of the updates we get from him, and even some other analysts too. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We are just six weeks away from the start of the 2025-26 NCAA men’s basketball season, and less…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":252979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1339,1317,1337,1338,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-252978","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-basketball","11":"tag-ncaabasketball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115263563567587376","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}