Flat-Astronomer287's Week Pre-Season Ballot

Rank	Team	Reason
1	Kansas	Bill Self is hard to go against and this feels like one of the most talented teams he's had.
2	UConn	Although they lost a lot of guys, UConn are still defending champs, Karaban and others could take a step up.
3	Houston	My march madness pick team from last year is returning 4 starters.
4	Alabama	Alabama is a little lower because I don't fully trust them, outside of Sears this team feels a little weak to me.
5	Duke	This team is ridiculously exciting, with Proctor and Flagg, I see so much upside.
6	Gonzaga	Gonzaga is always good, and returning all 5 starters.
7	Iowa State	I don't fully understand the ISU hype, Jones and Momcilovic are somewhat ball dominant, but nonetheless this team is exciting.
8	Purdue	Potential Ewing Theory with Edey? Painter always seems to create something out of nothing, and this team was just in the title game.
9	North Carolina	Love them picking up Cade Tyson, but this team feels like it has a lot of question marks, so I couldn't get them higher than 9.
10	Arizona	Arizona has Love which makes me really like them, although the depth issues holds them at the bottom of my top 10.
11	Tennessee	Tennessee feels really weird, Zeigler seems to play well with everyone, and they brought in several transfers that make me like them, including a guy named Igor!
12	Baylor	Baylor had some weird coaching issues, in Drew's staff, I also think Flagler and Cryer may have been more important to this team than we think right now.
13	Creighton	I'm a little higher on Creighton than others, the defense, especially Kalkbrenner is a very valuable asset.
14	Indiana	Being a Michigan fan I've seen a lot of Indiana games, and I love the transfers they've added to complement Mgbako and Reneau, so I'm a little higher on them than others.
15	Marquette	Shaka Smart always has a really good team, and Kam Jones is one of the best players in the country for me.
16	Texas A&M	A&M is not the most trustworthy team, and they especially struggle out of conference which makes me like them less than Indiana and Marquette.
17	Arkansas	While I usually like Arkansas teams, this one lacks shooting and defense, so I'm skeptical about them being top 15.
18	Cincinnati	Conversely Cincinnati is one of the most hard nosed, great defensive teams in college basketball.
19	Texas	Texas is hard to pin down, while they have a very talented roster with Pope, Mark, and Kaluma, they have had coaching switches and generally inconsistent play as well.
20	Auburn	Auburn has a lot of issues to me, their best player is probably a Furman transfer, the defense is shaky at best, and they don't exactly have a plethora of big men.
21	Rutgers	I'm way in on Rutgers, they added two players in the ESPN top 4, combined with recent upward trends and Pikiell who I think is a great coach.
22	UCLA	Any team that is starting basically all transfers draws concern, and UCLA also struggled last year, but I do like the roster, especially Bilodeau, so this could be one of their best teams in years.
23	Ole Miss	Ole Miss will likely start a team of guys that all averaged 15+ a game last year, which makes for a really exciting team, but the disastrous play towards the end of last season draws concern.
24	Kentucky	Kentucky have a lot of questions marks, they obviously exited March Madness in the first round last year, and are starting all transfers, but it's hard to doubt them when things always work out.
25	McNeese	McNeese state is one of my favorite teams in the country, DJ Richards, and Shahada Wells are very hard to defend, and I think they will come back even stronger than last year.

Overall Rationale

I tried to mix it up a little without doing anything completely insane, I went for teams I felt like were returning a lot of starters, or seemed to be trending up, but I also tried not to deviate too far from the overall consensus. For example I really don't think Auburn is all that, and I really like Purdue and McNeese so I made bold picks there, but I still have a pretty chalk poll.