College Basketball: Associated Press Preseason All-America Team Released

The Associated Press officially named its preseason All-America team earlier this afternoon, and it has a certain Midwestern flavor. 

Indiana's Cody Zeller was one vote shy of being a unanimous selection from the national panel that is made up of 65 voters. 

Zeller was joined by Creighton's Doug McDermott, Ohio State's Deshaun Thomas, Murray State's Isaiah Canaan, Lehigh's C.J. McCollum and Michigan's Trey Burke.

There were six players named to the team because Burke and McCollum tied for fifth place in the voting with 16 votes each.

McDermott received 62 votes, Canaan received 43 and Thomas was named on 26 ballots. 

It is interesting to note that half of the AP preseason All-America team comes from non-power conferences. The other half comes from the Big Ten.

Many consider the Big Ten to be the nation's strongest conference heading into the season, and the release of this team does nothing to quell that notion. 

However, this may be the season that a number of mid-major teams make a deep run in the NCAA tournament instead of just one or two. After all, there is a large amount of enticing talent on these non-power conference teams, which can be seen on the All-American squad.

What do you think about this team? Was someone included that should not have been? Was someone left off?

Let me know in the comments.