Gonzaga, Louisville and Texas Tech highlighted as preseason Top 25 movers as college basketball’s “fifth-year” era reshapes expectations

As the calendar turns toward the official AP preseason Top 25 poll, early projections are already pointing to a familiar question in college basketball: which teams look built to jump quickly in November, and which ones might simply survive expectations. A new breakdown from Busting Brackets, published on Aug. 17, places Gonzaga, Louisville and Texas Tech among the programs it expects to “rise” in preseason Top 25 consideration, centering the debate on the impact of additional fifth-year players.

The broader context is that college basketball’s roster construction has become more uneven from team to team, largely because a number of programs can field a mix of veteran continuity and older scholarship experience. The preview frames this as a practical advantage for early-season perception. Teams that can pair returning offensive or defensive structure with players who have logged more collegiate minutes tend to be easier for voters to trust at the start of a season, especially when the first impressions are based on nonconference opponents and early exhibitions.

In that light, Gonzaga’s inclusion as a potential mover continues a long-standing theme for the Bulldogs under Mark Few: the program typically protects its identity, then layers in the personnel needed to keep the offensive pace and spacing functional. The Busting Brackets preview flags Gonzaga as one of the teams that stands to benefit from veteran additions, suggesting that additional eligibility could help reduce the usual preseason volatility associated with younger rotations. Even without a verified list of who is filling which role, the central claim is structural: more experienced lineups can influence how preseason voters interpret readiness.

Louisville is treated similarly in the preview, with the implied logic tied to roster experience rather than a specific season projection. In practical terms, preseason rankings in the AP model often reward teams that appear ready to win immediately, not just teams that have high-end talent. If Louisville’s offseason roster management results in more players who have already learned a college game plan at a high level, the preview suggests that could translate into a higher ceiling in what voters expect before any regular-season results exist.

Texas Tech rounds out the trio in the breakdown. The preview’s emphasis on “fifth-year additional players” indicates a belief that Texas Tech, like Gonzaga and Louisville, could have a more settled on-court look than teams that rely heavily on younger newcomers. For a program, that can matter because preseason Top 25 placement can shape public expectations, early scheduling narratives, and recruiting conversations, even before conference play begins. At this stage of the cycle, the ranking itself is the reward, but the underlying theme is team-building certainty.

It is worth noting a limitation of this kind of preseason preview: it identifies likely movers, but it does not, by itself, confirm the final AP ballot results or the exact mechanics behind every vote. The same published preview also references an unrelated “official preseason top-25 poll” release for college football, which underscores that readers should focus on the college basketball claim rather than any cross-sport wording. What to watch next is straightforward: when the AP preseason Top 25 is released, the ranking movement of Gonzaga, Louisville and Texas Tech will show whether voters reward the veteran-experience angle that this breakdown expects.