With Selection Sunday now only six days away, this will be the final poll before teams are more affectionately referenced with their NCAA Tournament seeding rather than by their rankings. And Kansas appears poised to parlay its No. 1 ranking, which it holds for a second straight week, into a No. 1 seed when the selection committee hands down its field of 68 teams.

Not only did the Jayhawks win the Big 12 for the 13th consecutive season, they did it with a four-game cushion. Kansas beat everyone in the Big 12 this season at least once, finished the regular season 28-3 with wins over Duke and Kentucky among them, and knocked off a red-hot Oklahoma State team on the road on Saturday. The Jayhawks are surging with the heat of March turning up.

This time next week, we’ll know the entire field of 68 teams.

Here’s how the AP poll looks before the major conference tournaments.

AP Top 25

The top 25 teams in The Associated Press’ college basketball poll, with first-place votes in parentheses, records through Mar. 5, total points based on 25 points for a first-place vote through one point for a 25th-place vote and last week’s ranking:


Record Points Previous
1. Kansas (59) 28-3 1619 1
2. Villanova (2) 28-3 1517 2
3. UCLA (3) 28-3 1487 3
4. Gonzaga (1) 30-1 1430 4
5. Oregon 27-4
 1364 6
6. North Carolina 26-6 1291
 5
7. Arizona 27-4 1252 7
8. Kentucky 26-5 1182 9
9. Baylor 25-6 1084 11
10. Louisville
 24-7 1047 8
11. West Virginia
 24-7 958 10
12. SMU 27-4 849 14
13. Purdue 25-6 839 16
14. Duke 23-8 667 17
15. Cincinnati 27-4 634 18
16. Florida State 24-7 631 15
17. Florida 24-7 617 12
18. Butler 23-7 538 13
19. Saint Mary’s 27-3 456 20
20. Wichita State 30-4 30-4 21
21. Virginia 21-9 400 23
22. Notre Dame 23-8 394 19
23. Iowa State 20-10 147 24
24. Wisconsin 23-8 139 22
25. Maryland 24-7 47 —