Somehow, it feels like just yesterday and a lifetime ago that the Florida Gators cut down the nets in San Antonio. A lot has happened since that memorable night in early April. Coaches have changed schools, rosters have reshuffled, the House vs. NCAA settlement was approved and Cooper Flagg was officially drafted No. 1 overall.
It’s hard to believe how much action has been packed into just three months. The new college basketball landscape has made the offseason far busier and more chaotic, leaving us with an abundance of burning questions. We’ll gradually work through them over the summer as we look ahead to what should be a fascinating 2025-26 campaign.
1. Will the ACC bounce back after a lackluster season?
The ACC is coming off a historically bad season in which it received just four bids to the NCAA Tournament. Outside of No. 1 seed Duke, no ACC team advanced to the Round of 32. In the second annual ACC-SEC challenge, a series of matchups between the two conferences, the ACC went 2-14.
The league’s struggles can be attributed to a number of factors. There has been heavy turnover among its coaches, as Hall of Famers like Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Boeheim, Roy Williams and Tony Bennett retired, ushering in new eras for their respective programs. The ACC was also slower to adjust to the sport’s changing climate, shaped increasingly by the transfer portal and NIL.
In 2025-26, the conference has the potential to bounce back. Duke should be a powerhouse once again, and programs such as Louisville, NC State, Virginia, North Carolina, Syracuse and more appear on the rise. When I spoke with Syracuse coach Adrian Autry in June, he expressed confidence that the ACC will turn things around in a major way.
“I think our whole conference kind of (had to adjust),” Autry told me. “Obviously Duke, they were the only ones who were kind of immune to it. It’s funny, you felt like they’ve always kind of operated on that level. Our league had to make that adjustment. I think this year, this will be the ACC that everyone is accustomed to. You look around the league, you look at these rosters, this league is going to be back to what it used to be. And I think it took our league a couple years from a basketball standpoint to make those adjustments.”
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2. Will the SEC’s reign continue?
While the ACC floundered in 2024-25, the SEC had perhaps the greatest men’s basketball season ever for a conference. Before league play, it posted a winning percentage of 88.9 percent. The SEC went on to earn a record-breaking 14 bids to the NCAA Tournament. Four of those teams reached at least the Elite Eight (Florida, Auburn, Alabama, Tennessee), with the Gators going on to win the national championship.
There is no doubt which conference currently sits atop the throne in college basketball. The top SEC schools are loaded once again, led by Florida, Auburn, Kentucky, Arkansas and Alabama. But the Big 12 and the Big Ten have arguably gotten stronger, with Purdue (more on the Boilermakers below) and Houston among the contenders for preseason No. 1 overall. Seven of the top 15 freshmen in the 2025 recruiting class picked a Big 12 school, including AJ Dybantsa (BYU) and Darryn Peterson (Kansas), and five Big Ten schools are featured in the top 10 of Hoops HQ’s ranking of the best transfer classes (Indiana, Michigan, Iowa, Washington and USC).
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3. Can Braden Smith and Trey Kaufman-Renn deliver Purdue its first national championship?
Purdue has a solid chance to open the 2025-26 campaign ranked No. 1 in the country. The Boilermakers are returning three standouts from last year’s team which finished fourth in the Big Ten and lost a nailbiter to Houston in the Sweet 16: 6-foot senior point guard Braden Smith, 6-foot-9 senior forward Trey Kaufman-Renn and 6-foot-5 senior guard Fletcher Loyer. Smith, the reigning Big Ten Player of the Year, will be one of the frontrunners for the Wooden Award; Kaufman-Renn made the All-Big Ten First Team with averages of 20.1 points and 6.5 rebounds; and Loyer, a three-year starter, averaged a career-high 13.8 points and shot 44.4 percent from three.
Coach Matt Painter’s squad had one glaring weakness in 2024-25: a lack of size. After 7-foot-4 freshman center Daniel Jacobsen suffered a season-ending injury in early November, Purdue had little rim protection and struggled immensely on the boards, ranking 362nd in the nation in blocks per game and 309th in rebounds per game. The Boilermakers will not only get Jacobsen back this season — they signed 6-foot-11 senior center Oscar Cluff, who averaged 17.6 points and 12.3 rebounds at South Dakota. The Portal Report ranked Cluff as the 10th best transfer (and No. 1 center) available this year. Purdue also added promising Israeli guard Omer Mayer, who played for Maccabi Tel Aviv last season. Mayer starred for Israel at the FIBA U19 World Cup, averaging 20 points, 5 rebounds, 4.3 assists and 2 steals in four outings.
The Boilermakers have reached the Final Four three times, most recently in 2024, but they have never cut down the nets. The 2025-26 roster has all the ingredients to finally get the job done: size, experience, depth and multiple All-American candidates.
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4. Will BYU’s A.J. Dybantsa live up to the hype in an uber-talented freshman class?
The hype around incoming freshman A.J. Dybantsa, the No. 1 player in the class of 2025, has been building for years now. The 6-foot-9, do-it-all wing out of Utah Prep is finally set to make his college debut for the Cougars. He’s considered an early favorite to be the No. 1 pick in the 2026 NBA Draft and should contend for the Wooden Award if he lives up to expectations. Dybantsa caught the eye of NBA reps during U19 USA Basketball trials a month ago. “He was so damn good this week, it’s ridiculous,” one NBA scout told Hoops HQ’s Krysten Peek. “A.J. has a combination of physicality and depth when we’re looking at modern NBA play. He has the potential to excel on both sides of the floor and can deepen a team’s two-way versatility with his length, athleticism and IQ. I’ll be surprised if he’s not the No. 1 pick next year.”
AJ Dybantsa, Incoming BYU Freshman, Has a Busy Summer Ahead
Dybantsa, BYU’s star freshman, will play a big role on the U19 USA Basketball team at the FIBA World Cup
Dybantsa is one of several freshmen with the potential to steal the spotlight in 2025-26. The new crop of rookies is just as loaded as last year’s class, which accounted for nine of the top 10 picks in the 2025 NBA Draft. Hoops HQ’s draft expert Jonathan Wasserman currently projects 11 freshmen to be taken in the lottery of next year’s draft. Kansas’ Darryn Peterson, Duke’s Cameron Boozer and Tennessee’s Nate Ament are all believed to be in the running for the No. 1 pick. Other names to monitor in the Freshman of the Year race include Baylor’s Tounde Yessoufou, Arizona’s Koa Peat, North Carolina’s Caleb Wilson, Louisville’s Mikel Brown Jr., Houston’s Chris Cenac Jr., Arkansas’ Darius Acuff and more.
5. Will the uptick in international players continue to shake up college basketball?
Since NIL and eligibility rules changed, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of international players joining college basketball. The reason is simple: top schools are offering more lucrative contracts than what’s available overseas. High-level prospects also get the opportunity to transition to life in the U.S. before moving on to the NBA.
The influx of talent from countries around the globe has already had a profound impact on the sport. Last season, stars like BYU’s Egor Demin and Illinois’ Kasparas Jakucionis — both of whom were selected in the first round of the 2025 NBA Draft — helped their teams reach the NCAA Tournament.
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Many more elite foreign players are entering the mix for the 2025-26 campaign. We got a peek at some of them at the FIBA U19 World Cup in early July. In addition to the aforementioned Omer Mayer, Hannes Steinbach, a 6-foot-9 forward from Germany who will play at Washington next year, was sensational, averaging 17.2 points and 14 rebounds per game. Argentinian Tyler Kropp, a 6-foot-8 forward, was the tournament’s leading scorer at 21.8 points per game. There are numerous other international recruits who could wind up being the X-factors for their respective programs, such as Italian wing Dame Sarr (Duke), Montenegrin guard Luka Bogavac (North Carolina), Serbian guard Andrej Kostic (Kansas State), Greek wing Neoklis Avdalas (Virginia Tech) and German forward Sananda Fru (Louisville). Illinois coach Brad Underwood has assembled a roster with five players from the Balkan region, headlined by Serbian guard Mihailo Petrovic, who was an MVP candidate in the Adriatic League.
