AP preseason basketball polls to be released Oct. 31 and Nov. 1

The preseason AP Top 25 polls for men's and women's college basketball, the longest-running polls of their kind, will be released the week of Oct. 31. 

The next men's preseason poll will be revealed at 12 noon ET on Monday, Oct. 31, while the women's poll will come out the morning of Tuesday, Nov. 1. The preseason AP all-America men's team – a tradition dating to 1948 – will be announced Nov. 2, and the women's team on Nov. 3. 

All will be released on AP lines to customers, as well as posted on AP's college basketball site, collegebasketball.ap.org, and the AP News app, along with analysis and additional coverage.

The Associated Press has released a men's preseason poll every year since 1962 and a women's poll since 1977, which also was the first AP women's basketball poll. The first AP men's basketball poll was on Jan. 20, 1949, and since then one has been released every week of every regular season. 

"For many fans, the preseason AP Top 25 poll serves as the starting point for the upcoming season," said Barry Bedlan, AP's sports products manager. "Part of the thrill of following college basketball each season is to see how the AP poll changes from week to week, based on the teams' play and the opinions of our panel of experts from across the country."

More than 60 sports writers and broadcasters of AP-affiliated media from around the country help determine the teams that appear in the polls. All voters have extensive backgrounds in covering college basketball. The team rankings are decided by a points system based on how each voter ranks college basketball's best teams. A team receives 25 points for each first place vote, 24 for second place and so on through to the 25th team, which receives one point. The rankings are set by listing the teams' point totals from highest to lowest. The mathematical formula is the same as the one used for the AP Top 25 college football poll and the AP Pro 32 rankings for NFL teams.  

AP customers can leverage the popularity of the AP polls to grow digital traffic and new revenue through AP's locally branded College Basketball Digital News Experience.