The Weight of No. 1

Every Preseason No. 1, Season by Season

Here is the whole history in one picture. Each square is one season, from Ohio State in 1961-62 to Purdue in 2025-26, coloured by how far that season's preseason No. 1 got. Dark blue means it won the title and red means it missed the tournament. Use the buttons to pick out an era.

The first row is mostly dark blue, and that is UCLA. John Wooden's teams started at No. 1 in six of the seven seasons from 1966-67 to 1972-73 and won the title all six times. The only break in that run was South Carolina in 1969-70, which went 25-3 and still stayed home, because back then each conference could send only one team and the Gamecocks lost the ACC tournament final.

After that the colours spread out. The preseason No. 1 has won it in eight more seasons since, the last of them North Carolina in 2008-09, and the bottom row has no dark blue in it at all. Here is every season in full.

How Far They Got

Put all 64 seasons with a tournament together and follow them round by round. Most preseason No. 1s live up to the billing for a while. Sixty of the 64 made the field, 47 reached the Sweet 16 and 30 made the Final Four, which is close to half.

The drop comes at the very end. Of the 25 that reached the final, 11 lost it. So the preseason No. 1 has been almost as likely to lose the title game as to win it, and it has won the title in a little more than one season out of five.

The Long Wait Since 2009

North Carolina went 34-4 in 2008-09 and won the title as the preseason No. 1. Nobody has done it since. That is 16 straight tournaments (there was none in 2020), and three of them ended in the final.

The near misses are some of the best teams of the era. Kentucky was 38-0 in 2014-15 before losing to Wisconsin in the Final Four. North Carolina lost the 2016 final to Villanova on Kris Jenkins's shot at the buzzer. Gonzaga was 31-0 going into the 2021 final and lost to Baylor. The year before Kentucky's 38-0 run, the 2013-14 Wildcats had reached the final as an 8 seed after a rough season.

At the other end, North Carolina in 2022-23 became the first preseason No. 1 to miss the tournament since the field grew to 64 teams in 1985, and Kansas in 2024-25 went out in the first round as a 7 seed.

Three Eras

Split the 64 seasons into three eras and the trend is plain. The dividing lines are my own choice, and the last one starts right after the last title, which flatters the drought a little, but the pattern holds however you slice it. In the UCLA years the preseason No. 1 won the title in six of 14 seasons. From 1976 to 2009 it won eight of 34. Since 2010 it has won none of 16.

I can only offer possible reasons, because a list of seasons cannot prove what caused the change. The field has grown: each conference could send only one team until 1975, the bracket reached 64 teams in 1985 and 68 in 2011, and it grows to 76 from 2027. A champion entering the round of 64 now has to win six games in a row, and one coming through the opening round has to win seven. That alone does not explain the drought, though, since the 64-team field was already 24 years old when North Carolina won in 2009. Roster turnover may matter more. Since 2006 the NBA has required players to be a year out of high school, which brought the one-season college star, and transfers have been much easier since 2021, so a team that looks best in October can be quite different by March. None of that makes the top team weaker in November. It may just give more teams a way past it.

What March Thought of Them

Seeding began in 1979, and the seed is a good way to see how the season itself judged the preseason pick. In 46 tournaments since then, the preseason No. 1 got a No. 1 seed 27 times and a No. 2 seed 11 times. Only eight times was it seeded third or lower.

Most of the November favourites were still near the top in March, which is why so many reached the Final Four. The outliers make the point the other way. Kentucky was the 8 seed in 2014 and still reached the final, and Kansas was a 7 seed in 2025 and lost its first game. North Carolina in 2023 and Michigan State in 2020 do not appear, because one missed the field and the other had no tournament to play in.

Where the Champions Started

Now turn it around. Instead of following the preseason No. 1, follow the eventual champion back to where it stood in that season's preseason poll.

The champion usually starts near the top. Fourteen of the 64 started at No. 1 and 25 more started between No. 2 and No. 5, so 39 champions, about three in five, came from the preseason top five. Thirteen started between No. 6 and No. 10. Only 12 came from lower down or from outside the poll.

The difference in recent years is not that the champions come from nowhere. Mostly, they come from just below the top. Since 2010 the champion has started No. 2 to No. 5 six times and No. 6 to No. 10 five times, and never at No. 1. The longest shots of the era were both UConn teams that were not ranked at the start, in 2011 and 2023. Florida, the No. 1 when the 2026-27 season began, won the 2025 title after starting at No. 21.

The Bettor's Read

If you are thinking about a preseason title bet, the history gives you a rough yardstick. Over every season, the preseason No. 1 has won it about 22% of the time, which works out to fair odds of about +360. Over the long middle era it was about 24%. Since 2010 it has not happened at all, though 16 seasons is a small sample and nobody should read it as a zero per cent chance.

Two cautions on reading that table. First, these are historical rates turned into odds, not a fair price for any team in any one season; a given No. 1 can be much stronger or weaker than the average one. Second, the top-five line is about the five teams together. It does not mean any one of them has a 61% chance, and it says nothing about whether backing all five would pay. With that in mind, the last line may still be the most useful: the November poll is a decent guide to the group the champion will come from, just not to which team it will be. The history is a starting point. A team's roster, its injuries and how it is actually playing by February matter more than where the voters put it in October.

One Last Word

Being No. 1 in the preseason poll is not a curse. Most of those teams make deep runs, nearly half reach the Final Four and they are still seeded at the top in March almost every year. What it is not, at least lately, is a prediction of the champion. The last preseason No. 1 to finish the job was North Carolina in 2009, and every champion since has started somewhere other than No. 1, sometimes just behind it and sometimes well outside the favourites.