Freshmen, Transfers, Injuries Shape 2025–26 Season

The 2025–26 college basketball season projects as a star-studded but deeply balanced campaign, driven by a blockbuster freshman class, a wave of high-impact transfers and new NIL/revenue‑sharing deals that are keeping many top players in school. Purdue guard Braden Smith has emerged as the consensus top returning player and a unanimous All‑America candidate, while elite freshmen — including Darryn Peterson, AJ Dybantsa, the Boozer brothers and Tounde Yessoufou — are expected to factor heavily into early-season narratives and draft projections. Early bracketology and preseason rankings project traditional powers — Duke, Purdue, UConn, Michigan, Houston and Ohio State — as top seeds, and veteran transfers have made preseason All‑America voting unusually dispersed. Arizona State was hit before opening night when junior guard Vijay Wallace dislocated his ankle and will miss the season, and Noah Meeusen is sidelined for weeks, compounding the Sun Devils' injury woes as they enter the Big 12 with low expectations. Ohio State enters with tempered expectations but optimism under second‑year coach Jake Diebler, and bracketologists flagged several programs on the early bubble — notably Cincinnati, Providence, Oklahoma and Nebraska — underscoring the make‑or‑break nature of the early season. Separately, college football preseason models and pundits project teams such as Alabama, Ohio State and Georgia Tech as conference-title contenders while the SEC and Big 12 race figures into national playoff and job-security narratives as the fall season unfolds.