The 12 Men’s College Hoops Teams History Says Can Win the 2026 NCAA Tournament

The Week 6 AP poll has been a strong predictor of national championship success with every title winner in the last 21 years ranked in the top 12.

Arizona forward Ivan Karchenkov and the Wildcats are ranked No. 1 in the Week 6 AP poll, a strong indicator they will compete for the national championship this season. / Aryanna Frank-Imagn Images

If 21 years of history are any indication, men’s college basketball fans can narrow down this season’s national championship contenders to just 12 teams based on one key stat. 

While gripes from fans and media members about the accuracy of the AP poll are a weekly occurrence, the poll has proven to have surprisingly strong predictive value of who cuts down the nets in a season. Amazingly, every national champion since 2004 has ranked in the top 12 of the AP poll entering the sixth week of the season. Former ESPN writer John Gasaway was the first to write about this, and since then, the wild stat has been propped up by fans and media members around the sport with remarkable success. The only AP poll week that has proven more predictive of March success is the final one that comes out the day after Selection Sunday. 

Why is Week 6 such a sweet spot? Well, we have enough data points at this stage in the season to spot surging squads that are clearly better than expected in the preseason. But the Week 6 poll is still influenced by some preseason priors that have predicted March success. It also removes the churn of conference play from the mix, where the perception of teams often bounces up and down more drastically than it should after difficult road losses. 

A great example? The 2022–23 UConn Huskies. They were unranked in the preseason, but after dominating the PK85 tournament that November, they climbed all the way into the top five by mid-December, qualifying as title contenders based on the stat. The Huskies hit a wall early in league play when they lost six of eight games, which knocked them down all the way to No. 24 in late January, but then surged ahead in February before dominating the NCAA tournament. Notably, while the Huskies had nearly fallen out of the poll entirely, their KenPom rank never dropped below sixth nationally, a good indication the AP voters were perhaps overreacting to the Huskies’ close conference losses.

Based on this season’s Week 6 AP poll, here are the 12 teams that history says will compete to win the title: 

Rank	Team	Record
1	Arizona	8–0
2	Michigan	8–0
3	Duke	10–0
4	Iowa State	9–0
5	UConn	8–1
6	Purdue	8-1
7	Houston	7–1
8	Gonzaga	9–1
9	Michigan State	8–1
10	BYU	7–1
11	Louisville	8–1
12	Alabama	7–2

All 12 were ranked in the preseason poll, though five climbed up from outside the top 12, including No. 1 Arizona, which entered the season at No. 13. The five who’ve fallen out from the preseason include early disappointments Florida, St. John’s, Kentucky, Texas Tech and UCLA.

Is this trend guaranteed to continue into 2026? Perhaps not. Outside that group includes some heavy hitters, like projected top-five picks Darryn Peterson (Kansas) and Caleb Wilson (North Carolina); All-Americans like JT Toppin (Texas Tech); and championship-winning coaches like Rick Pitino, John Calipari and Todd Golden. 

But that top 12 is a very strong one, and all have been tested with difficult early schedules thanks to the litany of high-profile matchups the sport saw in November and early December. Plus, the predictive value of the Week 6 poll has held up despite massive structural changes in the sport with the transfer portal and NIL. 

So while it’s not worth writing off your team’s season if they fall outside today’s top 12, the data shows that the 12 teams that did make the cut can sleep a bit better tonight and maybe even start dreaming about confetti falling on them this April in Indianapolis. 

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