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On top again Coaches tab defending champion Duke as No. 1
Updated: Thursday November 01, 2001 6:39 PM
ARLINGTON, Va. (Ticker) -- Defending national champion Duke continued its run of preseason honors Thursday, receiving the top ranking in the USA Today/ESPN coaches' basketball poll. The Blue Devils collected 30 of 31 first-place votes and 774 points from a panel of Division I coaches, which thinks Duke's returning corps and a freshman sensation outweigh the loss of Shane Battier. Illinois received the remaining first-place vote and is second with 698 points, followed by Maryland, Kentucky and Florida. UCLA, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri and St. Joseph's round out the top 10. Virginia is 11th and is followed by Michigan State, Memphis, Georgetown, Stanford, Boston College, Temple, Oklahoma State, North Carolina and Syracuse. The last five are Indiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Southern California and Fresno State. The preseason opens Thursday with the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic at Madison Square Garden in New York. Temple will play Florida, and Maryland will meet 2001 national runner-up Arizona. Arizona fell out of the top 25 after losing a good portion of its team to the NBA. But Duke remained in the top spot. The Blue Devils already have been picked to win the Atlantic Coast Conference championship. Junior point guard Jason Williams was selected as the ACC Preseason Player of the Year. Williams is back to lead a team that went 35-4 last season, posting an 87-72 win over Arizona in the national title game in Minneapolis. The Blue Devils have one obvious absence from their most recent championship team in Battier, who won the Naismith Award as the nation's best player and was named Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four. Duke also lost senior Nate James but hopes to add touted freshman shooting guard Daniel Ewing to a rotation that includes Williams, Carlos Boozer, Chris Duhon and Mike Dunleavy. However, the Blue Devils are not in the poll's dominant league. The Big 12 Conference has five teams in the top 25, while the ACC, Big Ten and Big East have four apiece. Kansas is the top Big 12 team in the poll at No. 7 and is joined by No. 9 Missouri, No. 18 Oklahoma State, No. 22 Texas and No. 23 Oklahoma.
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