College Sports Journal Sagarin High Major Men’s Basketball Top 25 – Preseason 2022-23
Below are the Top 25 High-Major rankings based on the Sagarin rankings for the preseason of the 2022-2023 season. Gonzaga is the preseason pick for not just the High-Major rankings but were the top spot overall. The Bulldogs lost in the Sweet 16 round to Arkansas a year ago but were the top seed in the West Region in the NCAA Tournament.
Houston is the #2 spot in its last year in the American Athletic Conference before it goes to a Power conference of the Big 12 next year. The Mountain West’s San Diego State sits in the third position in the preseason. Houston is coming off an Elite Eight appearance where the lost to Villanova, while San Diego State lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament to Creighton.
Another WCC joins Gonzaga in the Top 5 in Saint Mary’s, who comes in at the #4 spot in the preseason rankings. The Gaels lost in the second round of the NCAA Tournament to UCLA last year. And Memphis joins Houston as a second AAC team to round out the Top 5 in the preseason rankings. The Tigers are also coming off a NCAA Tournament second round defeat from Gonzaga last year.
The NCAA basketball schedule this season begins with many schools starting play on November 7th. The 2022-23 season will culminate with the national championship from NRG Stadium in Houston on April 3rd. CSJ will complete a weekly Sagarin rankings of the High Major teams throughout the regular season and do a final ranking after the national tournament is complete.
The High-Major conferences include AAC, A-10, Conference USA, Mountain West, West Coast, and Missouri Valley conferences. These conferences have historically been multiple bid leagues in the middle ground between the Power Six conferences and the typically one-bid mid-major conferences.
Sagarin rankings provide the only rankings that actually ranks all Division I schools but our rankings will show just the High Major side of things and have been used for several years with his own computer ranking system to distinguish strength of schedule and strength of team when comparing teams.
You can see the full Division I Sagarin rankings at The USA Today and at Jeff’s site itself.
In the rankings, you will see the the High Major rankings first and the overall Division I ranking to the right of the the High Major ranking.
Click on the rankings to see a larger view.
The following are the individual High Major conference rankings highlighted in green and the overall rankings within overall ranking in Division I.
Originally from LaMoure, North Dakota, Kent is a 1996 graduate of North Dakota State University. His prior writing experience is over 15 years having previously worked with D2football.com, I-AA.org, and College Sporting News before coming to College Sports Journal in 2016. His main focus is college football is the Missouri Valley Football Conference within the Division I FCS. And in 2017, he began also to look at the FBS Group of Five conferences of the American Athletic, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West, and Sun Belt.
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