The Athletic’s men’s college basketball 2024 preseason Top 25: Coach insights, key questions

Houston replaced do-everything point guard Jamal Shead with Oklahoma transfer Milos Uzan but otherwise returns its entire rotation from a year ago. Shead was the Cougars’ leader and rock, but this season’s roster might have a higher ceiling if it stays healthy.

Shead’s first-half ankle injury hung over their Sweet 16 loss to Duke, but the Cougars were also missing Tugler and Arceneaux, both of whom looked terrific in a blowout charity scrimmage win against Texas A&M this preseason. Uzan has fit in seamlessly as Shead’s replacement, helping get open looks for Houston’s best shooters and bringing an unselfish approach that rubs off on his teammates. “We’re not playing offensively like we played last year,” head coach Kelvin Sampson said. “This year we’re more free flowing. You’re going to see a lot of extra passes. The ball’s going to move better. Last year, we played the way we had to to win.”

This year the go-to guys should be Cryer, Sharp and Roberts. Roberts is one of the nation’s best passers at his position, and as a sixth-year player, the game has slowed down for him. Tugler was becoming an elite defensive big before his foot injury last year and looks to be even better as a sophomore. “The X-factor for us is Jojo,” Sampson said. “A lot of nights he’ll be our best player because he’s good enough to be.”

Shead will be missed the most on the defensive end, but Houston’s defense looked just as dominant as ever against A&M. It’s hard to imagine Sampson letting one of his teams slip on that side of the floor.

Kansas is stacked again. Bill Self was on a mission this spring to shore up the issues that plagued his team a year ago: shooting and depth. He landed two of the best shooters in the portal in Mayo and Griffen and enters November with one of the deepest rosters in the country.

“We had bad spacing last year,” Self said. “I told the team yesterday what excites me more than anything is we can run a crap offense, which we’re going to do, and we still come away with three points, where we didn’t do that much last year.”

Give Self enough talent, and he’s usually going to figure it out, but it will still be difficult to play his three most experienced players (Harris, Adams and Dickinson) together. Adams is a non-shooter; Harris is a reluctant shooter; Dickinson is streaky and struggled from deep a year ago. The offense hummed at times last year because all three are such good passers, but it looked clunky when outside shots weren’t falling. This year, Self can play smaller by moving Storr to the four for segments. He also believes the raw but supremely athletic Bidunga will help ease Dickinson’s minutes load.

It could take some time to properly incorporate the newcomers, but Self is optimistic because he has so many weapons to work with and a few transfers — like Coit and Moore — who have been even better than expected.

Last season Iowa State had the best defense in college basketball but ranked 52nd in KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency. The Cyclones hope they can improve on the latter after returning their four leading scorers and adding skill in the frontcourt with Jefferson and Jackson.

Jackson, a 6-11 fifth-year senior, was the MVP of the summer, Iowa State coach T.J. Otzelberger said: “He can drive the ball, score the ball, pass the ball, finish with both hands. I feel really confident in Dishon and his ability.”

Jefferson gives the Cyclones a back-to-the-basket threat who also is comfortable on the perimeter. He is a plus passer for a big man, averaging 2.3 assists per game last season. To help in the shooting department, the Cyclones added Heise, who shot 35.6 percent from 3 at Northern Iowa last year and went 6 for 6 on corner 3s in an intrasquad scrimmage this preseason. Otzelberger also feels like Momcilovic and Jones are capable of shooting the ball better than they did last season.

“If we can get those guys shooting the ball at a high clip, that really helps open the floor for guys like Gilbert and Lipsey to get downhill and make plays,” Otzelberger said. “So I feel like that’s where we take the step. I don’t think it’s changing a whole lot. It’s being 10-15 percent better.”

The defense should still be dominant. Otzelberger’s culture of playing hard has become a staple. Now it’s just a matter of whether the Cyclones can do enough on the other end to go from a really good team to an elite one.

Few teams were as successful in the transfer portal this offseason as the Bears, who landed two four-year starters in Omier and Roach, All-ACC players at Duke and Miami (Fla.), respectively, with Final Four minutes to their name.

“The confidence you get from that experience matters,” Baylor coach Scott Drew said. “Plus, players are always going to listen to players more than anyone else. They get to share that with each other and help create the confidence with someone that has been there and done it.”

While Omier will likely be the most productive player this year, Baylor’s backcourt is what makes it a serious Final Four contender. Roach will provide the steadying presence. Nunn, a talent scoring guard and former VCU transfer, could be the latest to take a second-year leap in Drew’s system. Don’t sleep on the freshman Wright, either.

But more than anyone else, Edgecombe will be the player who determines how far the Bears go. The Bahamian off-guard, a likely top-five pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, is among the most explosive players in the country.

“Across the board, he’s tremendous,” Drew said. “He has a chance to be an all-league defender. He defends, he passes. He takes good shots. He cheers on his teammates. He’s a jack-of-all-trades. But at the same time, it’s always fun to coach a player that is capable of making the SportsCenter Top 10 every day at practice.”

Baylor will need to find consistency in the frontcourt, but the pieces are here for Drew’s squad to be exceptionally hard to guard and extremely flexible on defense.

The Wildcats are the fifth Big 12 team within our top nine. Good luck to everyone involved.

Arizona arrives in a new conference after seeing off two NBA players in Pelle Larsson and Keshad Johnson along with All-Pac-12 center Oumar Ballo, now at Indiana. This year’s roster is one coach Tommy Lloyd should love coaching due to its versatility and ability to out-muscle opponents inside.

“We want to play a physical style of basketball,” Lloyd said. “I tell our guys all the time, we’re going to win more games rebounding, getting loose balls, than we are making 3s. So for us, it’s just understanding and not losing sight of that.”

The frontcourt should be among the best in the country even without Ballo. The 7-foot-2 Krivas has fantastic footwork and touch. Veesaar is something of a forgotten player but has flashed in his first two years. Townsend is an inside-out big who can rebound and post, and Awaka defends well across the frontcourt. And don’t forget the 6-foot-8 five-star freshman Bryant, who will allow the Wildcats to add more perimeter skill at the 4 without necessarily getting smaller.

A lot will come down to Love and the backcourt, though. Lewis and Bradley figure to enter the starting lineup on a more full-time basis, with Bradley running point and Lewis being the do-it-all glue guy, but Love will be the go-to option on offense as he caps a career that has been a mix of spectacular and maddening.

“Listen, I would like to see Caleb average 15 points a game, not 25,” Lloyd said. “It’ll probably be a little bit of trial and error because this is a guy that scored over 2,000 points, and he’s had some tough moments in college, but he’s had some incredible moments. So I don’t want him to go away from what’s made him successful. But I also don’t want him to just try to become a little bit better version of that.”

The Red Raiders could be one of the best shooting teams in the country: Grant McCasland will start four players who all shot better than 36.4 percent from 3 last season, including two who were 45-plus.

“It may be individual guys that can go get their own shot is not going to be a strength, but we can put pressure on the rim because of the spacing that all these guys that can shoot provide,” McCasland said. “I do think we need to play quicker on misses and makes, so that way we’re not up against the clock and we can just keep the ball moving long enough to where these guys through the course of multiple actions can get enough good shots.”

The Red Raiders also have a potential difference maker in the shot creation department in Anderson. The freshman led Germany to an under-18 Eurobasket championship this summer, averaging 20.3 points and 5.0 assists.

McCasland also landed one of the most talented bigs in the portal in Toppin. He can play both interior positions, and Williams can play either the three or the four, giving McCasland a choice between playing big and flooding the floor with skill. Also helping power the offense will be assistant coach Jeff Linder, the former Wyoming coach who rejoined McCasland after working for him at Midland College.

McCasland’s North Texas teams were elite on defense, but injuries made things difficult for the Red Raiders at that end last season. The key will be finding someone who can be a stopper on the perimeter.

“We’ve got to find the right defensive lineup to keep the ball out of the paint because we’ve got offensive talent and we’ve got guys that I think cause a lot of problems for defenses from different areas,” he said. “I do think we’ve got enough size now and enough scoring around the basket that we can play inside-out with different lineups and have enough depth.”

Cincinnati coach Wes Miller feels like he has a head start because he returns five of his top six players.

“That’s kind of felt like the old days a little bit this summer where you’re not spending as much time just teaching what we do,” Miller said. “We’re spending more time on how we do it.”

It also helps that the transfer pieces he did add are veterans who have been able to learn quickly and fit with his returning pieces. The Bearcats needed more shooting, and Hickman gives them that. Cincy was missing an athletic four and maybe landed the most athletic one available in Mitchell, who should help strengthen what was already a good defense and help the Bearcats play faster.

Miller has yet to make an NCAA Tournament in his first three seasons at Cincinnati, but he’s optimistic. He can play a lot of versatile lineups, and it’ll be a heated battle to see who starts in the backcourt between Thomas, James, Skillings and Hickman. If two of those guards are coming off the bench, that could be a nice changeup.

“I think at this point this is the best group I’ve had here,” Miller said. “That doesn’t really mean anything if we don’t continue to grow and do our part and stay healthy. But so far we’re in a good spot.”