When it comes to ranking college basketball teams, fans and prognosticators alike will find just about every reason in the book not to see eye to eye.
This team is too high. This team is too low. Why is this team in the top 25 after it just lost to a team that wasn’t even ranked? From human polls to predictive metrics, there’s almost always something wrong with how another person (or computer) looks at the sport.
In light of all the negativity and discourse, here’s an aspect of college hoops we might be able to agree on: releasing a “top 25” for the following season just hours after the national championship game — while there’s over 1,900 names floating around in the transfer portal — is in many ways, absurd. Despite the fact that every program in the country is going to look vastly different once November rolls around, a handful of credible media outlets take a stab at making sense of the portal and eligibility rules so that they can create their own hierarchy heading into the offseason.
Thus, the expression, “way-too-early” power rankings.
As the Florida Gators celebrate their win over the Houston Cougars in the national championship game, that means it’s already time to look ahead toward the 2025-26 season. Let’s see where a few national media outlets have the Gonzaga Bulldogs ranked.
ESPN’s Jeff Borzello has the Zags ranked just behind the reigning national champions with a projected starting lineup of Braeden Smith, Jalen Warley, Steele Venters, Braden Huff and Graham Ike. Borzello notes how it’s going to be a different look without Ryan Nembhard, Nolan Hickman, Khalif Battle and Ben Gregg around, but also the potential for another year of the Huff-Ike combo in the frontcourt. Neither Huff nor Ike has made their intentions for next season clear, though should they return to Spokane for one more year side-by-side, they’d be quite the one-two punch on offense for the Zags to lean on.
Guard and perimeter play are Borzello’s biggest concerns for the Bulldogs heading into the offseason, noting that Smith and Warley didn’t play last season, and that Venters hasn’t played since 2023 when he was with the Eastern Washington Eagles due to injury. Smith, who took a redshirt year after transferring in from the Colgate Red Raiders, will be taking over point guard duties from Nembhard, while the 6-foot-7 Warley, by way of the Virginia Cavaliers, is slated to play meaningful minutes on the wing with Michael Ajayi and Dusty Stromer exiting via the transfer portal. Davis Fogle, a 6-foot-6, four-star recruit from Anacortes, Washington, could also see playing time in his first year with the Zags.
Houston checks in at No. 1 in ESPN’s way-too-early top 25 and is followed by the Purdue Boilermakers, Louisville Cardinals, UConn Huskies and Michigan Wolverines in the top five.
The upper echelon of John Fanta’s list isn’t far off from his ESPN counterpart’s, except Fanta has the Duke Blue Devils in the top five instead of Michigan. Like Borzello, Fanta has the Zags at No. 20 on his top 25 pecking order for next season.
Two of Gonzaga’s known nonconference opponents for 2025-26 — the UCLA Bruins and the Kentucky Wildcats — made it onto Fanta’s top 25, with UCLA at No. 9 and Kentucky at No. 16.
USA Today’s trio of writers who contributed to its way-too-early top 25 rankings note that while Ike could return to Spokane for another year, the 6-foot-9 All-WCC forward is “likely” to go through the evaluation process for the 2025 NBA Draft before he makes a decision.
Three teams that Gonzaga faced last season occupy the top four spots on USA Today’s top 25: No. 1 Houston, No. 3 UConn and No. 4 UCLA. The BYU Cougars, boasting the nation’s No. 1 high school recruit in AJ Dybantsa, came in at No. 5.
While pointing out the holes in Gonzaga’s backcourt that others on this list already have, Isaac Trotter also notes the Zags “should have money to spend” to acquire talent in the transfer portal and retain the players they already have on the roster in his way-too-early power rankings.
Houston is No. 1 in Trotter’s top 25 for 2025-26, with Duke at No. 2 and the Auburn Tigers at No. 3.
Kevin Sweeney, who also has the Zags at No. 22 in his way-too-early top 25 rankings, calls last season a “somewhat disappointing campaign” for Gonzaga, despite finishing in the top 10 of KenPom’s rankings.
Jon Rothstein, also known as the insider’s insider, starts his daily offseason rankings of the top 40 teams in the country with Gonzaga all the way down at No. 40. Rothstein’s current lineup projection for the Bulldogs is Smith, Warley, Venters, Emmanuel Innocenti and Huff in the starting five. Ike is among Rothstein’s “key losses” from last season, even though the 6-foot-9 forward could technically return to Gonzaga as a fifth-year player.
The Saint Mary’s Gaels are at No. 31 in Rothstein’s 45, with Jordan Ross, Mikey Lewis, Dillan Shaw, Paulius Murauskas and Harry Wessels projected to start for Randy Bennett. Shaw, a four-star recruit in the 2025 class, is the only newcomer In that group.
CJ Moore’s way-too-early top 25 didn’t feature the Zags, Gaels or any team from a mid-major conference for that matter. The SEC leads all leagues with seven teams featured in Moore’s top 25, though the Big 12 might be considered the toughest conference given it has six teams inside the top 15 alone, as opposed to the SEC’s three. Six schools from the Big Ten are spread throughout the top 25, while the ACC (three) and Big East (three) take up the remaining six spots.
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