The All-Time AP Poll, 2023 Update
How did this season's polls shake up the all-time ranking?
In 2021, I concocted a ranking I call the All-Time AP Poll.
Longtime readers should already be familiar with this, as I published the above video explaining it last year. If you’re not familiar with the concept, I highly recommend watching the video, but if you don’t have time, here’s a short primer on how the ranking works.
The actual AP Men’s Basketball Poll is tabulated on a weekly basis by taking individual voters’ ballots, assigning each ranked team a point value inverse to their ranking (#1 gets 25 points, #2 gets 24 points, down to 1 point for #25), and combining all of the ballots to calculate each team’s final score. My All-Time AP Poll performs the same calculations, but instead of combining 60 or so individual voters’ ballots to determine the best teams on any given week, I combine all 1259 composite weekly polls — from January 18, 1949, to the present day — to help determine the best programs of all time.
I’ve been updating the All-Time AP Poll on a weekly basis for the past two seasons; as polls have released every Monday during the regular season, I’ve been awarding each ranked team their points and recalculating the overall ranking. When I produced the video last year, the ranking was current through the 2021-22 season.
But we’ve played a whole season of basketball since then! That’s 19 polls of new data and 6178 more points to award!1 Given this was the 75th season of the AP Poll, you might not think one season of data would make much of a difference, but you’d be surprised how much higher good teams can rise in just four months.
Let’s take a look at how the 2022-23 season changed the landscape of this all-time ranking.
Biggest Point Gainers
A total of 54 different teams were ranked on the AP Poll at some point during the 2022-23 season. Of those, 11 gained at least 250 points: the equivalent of being ranked #1 for ten weeks.
These were the biggest point gainers of the year.
Of a possible 475 points, Houston missed only 21 throughout the season, as they spent seven weeks at #1 and were ranked in the top three for every week but one, when they dropped to #5.
Also spending time at #1 this year were Purdue (also seven weeks), North Carolina (three), and Alabama (two). Ignoring North Carolina because I don’t wanna talk about it, Purdue and Alabama both shone despite low preseason rankings: Alabama started the season at #20 while Purdue was unranked entirely.
Kansas and Texas round out the top five by being consistently good but never the best. Kansas never dropped out of the top ten and Texas was only that low at the very beginning of the year; both peaked at #2 this season.
A little lower on the list, other stalwarts and AP Poll regulars strengthened their all-time cases significantly. But how did this all shake up the ranking itself? Who rose the most this year?
Highest Rank Climbers
The following teams climbed at least five spots on the All-Time AP Poll in 2022-23.
With the astounding exception of Alabama, all of these teams are outside the top 100. The reason for this is simple: there are far more programs who have earned just a few hundred points than there are those who have earned a few thousand, so lower-ranked teams are bunched closer together, making it easier to pass several of them at once.
No one is more emblematic of this than Florida Atlantic, who this season became ranked on the AP Poll for the first time in program history, making them the 205th team to achieve this feat. They only earned 16 points over five nonconsecutive weeks, but that zipped them ahead of 22 schools, all of which have been ranked somewhere between one and five weeks in their history.
TCU had undeniably their best season in program history in terms of AP Poll performance. They had previously been ranked on no more than eight polls in any given season. This year, they blew that record to smithereens by appearing on 17 of the season’s 19 polls, more than doubling their previous personal best and gaining 127 points on the All-Time AP Poll.
Charleston rejoined the AP Poll this year for the first time since 2003, sticking around for four weeks, peaking at #18, and gaining 23 All-Time AP Poll points, good for a six-spot raise. Meanwhile, Saint Mary’s turned in another good-not-great season — the norm under Randy Bennett — and continued to claw toward the all-time top 100 despite never having been ranked in a weekly top 10; they gained 69 points this year while rising five spots.
All of these teams saw tremendous success this season, but as some teams rise, others must fall. You can never lose points on the All-Time AP Poll, but you can drop in the rankings if other teams pass you up. Here’s who got passed up the most this year.
Losing Ground
The following teams dropped at least two spots on the All-Time AP Poll in 2022-23.
There was a ton of movement in the 20-25 range and Oklahoma was hurt the most by it. Purdue began the season exactly one point behind them, so they passed them up almost immediately, and they were followed by Virginia about midway through the season and Gonzaga at the very end. NC State was ranked this season, but they only gained a total of seven points, so Virginia and Gonzaga passed them up too.
Success from some SEC teams, present (Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas) and future (Texas), left others (Florida, Missouri) in the dust, while also taking Memphis and St. John’s as collateral damage.
All of the teams in the 110s just so happened to be leapfrogged by both TCU and Saint Mary’s on their treks upward.
That’s all for big splashes on the All-Time AP Poll this year, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least give a passing mention to everyone else who saw their standing somehow change in 2022-23.
And The Rest
Including the teams I’ve already gone in depth on above, the following teams, sorted by current All-Time AP Poll rank descending, are listed differently on the ranking today than they were a year ago. This means they either gained at least one point or were passed up in the rankings by at least one team.
Kentucky (+105 points)
North Carolina (+84)
Duke (+142)
Kansas (+398)
UCLA (+312)
Arizona (+337)
Indiana (+168)
Michigan State (+20)
Ohio State (+7)
Illinois (+57)
Villanova (+10)
Michigan (+10)
Maryland (+31)
UConn (+241)
Purdue (+375) [+3 ranks]
Marquette (+138) [-1]
Virginia (+320) [+3]
Notre Dame [-2]
Gonzaga (+298) [+2]
Oklahoma [-3]
NC State (+7) [-2]
Iowa (+1)
Tennessee (+294) [+2]
Alabama (+364) [+5]
Florida [-2]
Memphis (+2) [-2]
Arkansas (+156)
Missouri (+16) [-2]
Texas (+360) [+3]
St. John’s [-2]
UNLV [-1]
Oklahoma State [-1]
Pitt (+1)
West Virginia (+2)
Kansas State (+148)
Wisconsin (+44)
Houston (+454) [+3]
Utah [-1]
Minnesota [-1]
Stanford [-1]
Baylor (+270) [+3]
Vanderbilt [-1]
DePaul [-1]
Georgia Tech [-1]
Auburn (+110)
Providence (+43)
Xavier (+131) [+3]
Florida State [-1]
Temple [-1]
Washington [-1]
Iowa State (+88)
Mississippi State (+28) [+1]
Oregon State [-1]
New Mexico (+10)
Oregon (+5)
Dayton (+7)
Arizona State (+1)
Clemson (+15)
Texas A&M (+22) [+1]
Butler [-1]
Creighton (+93) [+3]
Boston College [-1]
Penn [-1]
Holy Cross [-1]
Texas Tech (+9)
San Diego State (+70) [+1]
Saint Joseph’s [-1]
Miami (FL) (+122) [+3]
Long Beach State and Loyola Chicago [-1 each]
SMU [-1]
Virginia Tech (+7)
TCU (+127) [+13]
Colorado [-1]
Washington State [-1]
Louisiana-Lafayette [-1]
Wyoming [-1]
Saint Mary’s (+69) [+5]
Utah State [-2]
Indiana State [-2]
Detroit Mercy [-2]
Rutgers (+5) [-2]
Ole Miss [-2]
LIU [-2]
Drake [-1]
Santa Clara [-1]
Northwestern (+5) [+1]
Marshall [-1]
Ohio [-1]2
Charleston (+23) [+6]
Illinois State [-1]
Loyola Marymount [-1]
Rice [-1]
Air Force [-1]
New Orleans and South Alabama [-1 each]
Florida Atlantic (+16) [+22 / NEW]
Northern Illinois [-1]
Army and North Texas [-1 each]
Harvard [-1]
Eastern Michigan [-1]
Green Bay, Iona, Lamar, and Northeastern [-1 each]
Cleveland State, Furman, Maryland Eastern Shore, Missouri State, Pepperdine, Texas State, Wayne State (MI), and Winthrop [-1 each]
Boise State and Middle Tennessee [-1 each]
Kent State [-1]
Bucknell [-1]
Old Dominion [-1]
And that’s all she wrote for the All-Time AP Poll this year. If you’re ever interested in weekly movement, be sure to check the Google Sheet I linked at the top of the article, as I tend to update it shortly after each new poll has been released, and I plan to continue doing that next year.
19 polls * 25 weeks = 6175 points, but ties in a weekly poll are scored such that all tied teams receive the same point value. Thus, every tie in the AP Poll creates one more point on the All-Time AP Poll. There were three ties this season.
Ohio and Northwestern were tied for 134th at the beginning of this season. Northwestern broke the tie, sending Ohio down to 135th on its own, then also passed Marshall.