Preseason College Basketball Rankings 2014: Takeaways from 1st Coaches Poll

The results of the first coaches poll of the 2014-15 college basketball season are in, and to the surprise of no one, Kentucky will open the year ranked No. 1.

Equally not-shocking is Arizona, Duke, Wisconsin and Kansas rounding out the rest of the Top Five.

In fact, very little about the Top 25 was a surprise to anyone who has been following along during the offseason. Maybe VCU is a little too low, and perhaps some team other than Iowa deserved the final spot in the rankings. But things shook out about as expected.

So what can we take away from this initial poll, and what does it tell us about our beloved sport that finally returns in four weeks?

We've listed seven observations, but make sure to add your own in the comments.

Takeaway No. 1: Kentucky Is King

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Approximately 0 percent of the country will be surprised to see Kentucky at No. 1.

After all, this entire offseason has been unofficially devoted to incessantly pointing out that Kentucky's bench would easily be one of the 10 best teams in the nation. At all five positions, John Calipari has at least two players who most coaches in the country would kill to have on their team.

The top four teams in the country are very strong this season. Love for Arizona, Duke and Wisconsin was enough to keep Kentucky from being unanimously named the No. 1 team, but the Wildcats did receive 75 percent of the first-place votes.

(What's shocking is that several coaches didn't have Kentucky at No. 1 or No. 2. Had the Wildcats received a second-place vote in each of the eight ballots in which they weren't No. 1, they would have gotten 792 votes instead of their actual total of 785. I can't wait to see the ballots and find out which coaches think Kentucky belongs at No. 3 or worse.)

The 40-0 talk has been substantially more sedated than in previous summers, but the "Kentucky is overrated" naysayers have been equally quiet.

We seem to have reached something of a national consensus that the Wildcats will be insanely good but that they'll also lose at least a game or two because that's just college basketball. Big Blue Nation is just hoping that the inevitable loss doesn't come in late March or early April.

Takeaway No. 2: Coaches Love Big Ten Basketball

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Wisconsin at No. 4 with three first-place votes 100 percent resonates with the sentiments we've had about the Badgers all summer. They're not quite a favorite to win the 2015 national championship, but they have a pretty good shot at making a repeat trip to the Final Four.

Beyond Wisconsin, though, the Big Ten is shaping up to be a bit of a crapshoot, and the first coaches poll of the season really exemplifies that.

Five Big Ten teams are ranked No. 18-25.

I don't even remotely agree with Iowa at No. 25, but Big Ten basketball is getting the type of treatment that SEC football receives every August. We may not know who the best three teams are at the moment, but we know there will eventually be three dominant Big Ten teams. Might as well rank a bunch of them and see what happens.

Further down the list, Minnesota missed the Top 25 but did receive 18 votes. Illinois even picked up four votes. It should be fun to watch the second and third tiers in this conference shake out over the first few weeks of the season.

Takeaway No. 3: Coaches Hate the Pac-12

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The Arizona Wildcats are exactly where they belong. It's a bit odd that they were No. 1 in only 9.4 percent of the coaches' polls, but it's no surprise to see them as the runners-up to Kentucky at the start of the season.

But while the coaches saw fit to rank five Big Ten teams after Wisconsin, they didn't deem a single Pac-12 team worthy of being the conference's second representative in the Top 25.

If we expand it to the Top 40, the Pac-12 got plenty of love. Stanford just barely missed the list with 47 votes. Utah received 26 votes, UCLA got 15, Oregon (somehow) got nine and Colorado had eight votes.

Of the bunch, it's most surprising that Utah missed the Top 25, and we suspect that will be rectified by The Associated Press in a few weeks.

Utah went 21-12 last season, missed the tournament and was absolutely dismantled by Arizona in the most important game of its season. But as the summer progressed, more and more people were jumping on the Delon Wright bandwagon.

Harvard will likely top everyone's list of unranked teams most likely to do some serious damage this season, but the Utes won't be far behind the Crimson. As a couple of those Big Ten teams fall by the wayside, look for the Utes to be one of the first teams jumping into the Top 25.

Don't be shocked if UCLA and Colorado are right behind them either.

Takeaway No. 4: ACC Is Loaded

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There were no real surprises in where the five ACC teams were ranked, but it reiterates the fact that the ACC is the conference most likely to produce the 2015 national champions.

Duke (No. 3), North Carolina (No. 6), Virginia (No. 8) and newest member Louisville (No. 9) all open the season ranked in the top nine. Syracuse just barely made it in at No. 24.

The Big Ten opened the 2012-13 season with a bang with three teams ranked in the Top Five, but this marks the first time since 2008-09 that four teams from the same conference were ranked in the top nine of the preseason coaches poll.

That was the year the Big East made history by earning three No. 1 seeds in the same tournament. Connecticut (No. 2), Louisville (No. 3) and Pittsburgh (No. 6) each defended its preseason ranking quite nicely, but Notre Dame (No. 9) had a disastrous season. The Irish finished in a worse place in the Big East (10th) than they were expected to finish in the entire country.

We'll see if each of those four ACC teams can avoid a similar fate.

Takeaway No. 5: Big Gap After Top 13

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As writers across the country posted their Top 10 rankings during the offseason, there was a good amount of fluctuation in the back half. The top five or six teams were pretty much unanimous—albeit not always in the same order—but Nos. 7-10 were rather flexible.

Were it not for our infatuation with round numbers, though, we would have found that there's a pretty strong consensus about the top 13 teams.

The difference is quite pronounced in the coaches poll, as there is a gap of 100 votes between Gonzaga at No. 13 and Iowa State at No. 14.

No other two spots in the poll have a gap of more than 72 votes.

What that seems to be saying is that there are 13 teams with a legitimate shot at winning the national championship. One look at the teams right on the cut line would seem to drive that point home.

Wichita State loses a crucial player from last year's undefeated team but still has Fred VanVleet and Ron Baker to make a deep run. Villanova is the overwhelming favorite to win the Big East and might have made a deep run last year was it not for an early pairing with Connecticut. Gonzaga adds several key transfers and could be vying for another No. 1 seed.

At No. 14-16, Iowa State is great, but the Cyclones are barely even being considered contenders to win their own conference. Connecticut is the reigning champ, but Kevin Ollie lost a whole lot of last year's pieces. And VCU should dominate the A-10, but the Rams don't have the height or strength to hang with an Arizona or Kentucky in the Final Four.

While there certainly won't be 100 percent agreement between the coaches poll and The AP poll, look for both to have the same teams in the top 13.

Takeaway No. 6: Keeping the Faith in SMU

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When the 2014 NCAA tournament ended and dozens began immediately posting their "way too early Top 25" projections for the upcoming season, SMU was unanimously the biggest riser.

After missing the tournament but making a run to the NIT championship, most analysts had SMU somewhere in the No. 11-15 range. Not only were the Mustangs bringing back a ton of crucial players in a conference full of great teams losing a lot from their 2013-14 rosters (Cincinnati, Connecticut and Memphis), but Larry Brown was also adding the top-rated point guard in the 2014 class.

Or so we thought.

News broke in July that Emmanuel Mudiay would be taking his talents to China amid rumors of ineligibility that were first reported by Yahoo Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski, leaving SMU without a single freshman on this year's team.

The Mustangs did add a key piece in Xavier's Justin Martin (their other key transfer, Jordan Tolbert, won't be eligible this season), but this is by and large the same roster that missed the tournament last year.

No matter. The Mustangs still sneak into the polls at No. 22 and rightly so. Even without Mudiay, they have the strength and depth to win the AAC and at least make it into the Sweet 16 in March.

Takeaway No. 7: Bottom 5 Can Either Be Great or Awful

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In each of the past two seasons, there has been a wide range of possibilities for teams ranked No. 21-25 in the preseason coaches poll.

Last year, Virginia just barely made it at No. 25 before winning the ACC and earning a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. Wisconsin checked in at No. 21 and earned a No. 2 seed. But at the other end of the spectrum, Notre Dame (No. 22) and Indiana (No. 24) both opened the season as ranked teams before crashing and burning in spectacular fashion.

Similarly, Gonzaga went from No. 22 at the start of the 2012-13 season to a No. 1 seed in the tournament. Wisconsin again turned preseason No. 21 into a solid spot in the tournament, earning a No. 5 seed. But Florida State and Texas went from a tie for No. 24 to a combined record of 34-34.

Should that trend continue for a third straight year, who is this year's meteoric riser, and who are the two duds?

Could all three come from the same conference?

There will be no shortage of people suggesting that Michigan (No. 23) is the diamond in the rough and that Syracuse (No. 24) is the one most likely to collapse after losing so many players from last year's team, but none of us can know for sure.

I suppose the biggest takeaway of all, though, is that this season can't start soon enough.

Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.