The 2026-27 college basketball season begins Sunday in Rome, Italy, when Notre Dame faces Villanova. The fun continues into Monday with a handful of marquee matchups on the slate, including No. 14 Miami facing No. 1 Florida in Tampa and No. 5 Arizona clashing with old Pac-12 foe No. 22 UCLA in Las Vegas. Between now and the national championship game in Detroit this spring, there will be plenty of drama and storylines to ponder.
Will Florida win its second title in three years with a majority of the core returning? How does reigning national champion Michigan look in the post-Dusty May era? Is this the year Jon Scheyer gets over the hump and wins a national title at his alma mater?
Is this Bill Self's final season at Kansas? Here is what we do know: Michigan State's Jeremy Fears Jr. is the CBS Sports preseason Player of the Year, while Kansas' Tyran Stokes — the projected No. 1 pick in the 2027 NBA Draft — is our preseason Freshman of the Year. Those players headlined CBS Sports' 2026-27 preseason All-American teams, which are full of returning talent.
With the season on the horizon, here is a quick guide to the 2026-27 college basketball season that includes national title odds, power-conference winners, predictions, long shots, and even some bold predictions for what should be a wide-open National Player of the Year race. Here are the odds (via FanDuel Sportsbook) to win the 2027 national title. Florida has been the consensus favorite, ahead of Duke, to win the national title for several weeks.
However, over the last few days, those odds have flipped back in Duke's favor despite Florida getting a majority of the votes in the 2026-26 preseason AP Top 25 poll ahead of Duke. Duke and Florida are almost by consensus the two best teams in college basketball entering the season. Florida has the nation's best frontcourt, led by Thomas Haugh, Rueben Chinyelu and Alex Condon, while Duke has arguably the deepest roster in college basketball and can do 10 or 11 deep on any given night.
The debate over who the best team in college basketball is will gain a strong data point within a month of the season when Duke faces Florida in the ACC/SEC Challenge on Dec. 1 in Gainesville. A lot can happen between now and then, but the winner of that game will likely be favored the rest of the season to cut down the nets. Last season, Michigan opened with the 13th-best odds (25/1) to win the national title.
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