The preseason AP Top 25 men’s basketball poll, which was released Monday, took 60 ballots and consolidated them into one ranking. Not one ballot, for the first time since 2012, included Virginia.
No. 7 Duke and No. 9 North Carolina were the only two ACC programs to appear in the poll. The Cavaliers, in the preseason poll’s previous 11 years, had rested within the top 25 nine times and had twice hovered among the hordes in the “others receiving votes” section. That section, always a curious footnote to the poll itself, hosted 30 programs this year, including Wake Forest, Miami, Clemson and Louisville from the ACC.
Virginia languished even below that section after another bumpy season ended in March with a chorus of nationwide grumbling about the slow offense usurping television screens.
But the 11-year run of receiving votes, though over, is resonant of a period of abundance. It took a long interval of sustained success, year after exacting year, to gain such poll recognition.
However, Virginia will now have to earn back all that lost credit. The Cavaliers will open their season Nov. 6 at John Paul Jones Arena against Campbell.
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