If you want to crash the AP Top 25 after going unranked in the preseason, it helps if your team is really old. That's one conclusion to be drawn from an analysis of the current Week 8 Top 25 men's college basketball teams based on age.
Think back six months to the offseason, when last we checked IDs for the top of Division I. Back then we didn't have a AP Top 25, of course. Using my colleague Jeff Borzello's preseason top 25, we correctly surmised that, for example, Kansas would show a very old look this season.
What we didn't know back then, however, was that by late December we'd be looking at a group of "surprise" Top 25 teams that skews decidedly in the direction of "old." In fact, four of the six oldest rotations in the current Top 25 were unranked in the preseason.
Memphis, BYU, Colorado State and James Madison are four examples of markedly old teams that have played their way into the Top 25. Moreover, the fifth oldest ranked team, Illinois, barely made the cut with the AP in the preseason, clocking in at No. 25.
As always, we measure how old a team is according to its average age weighted by minutes. Here's what we think we've learned so far in 2023-24 when it comes to age and college basketball.
Memphis is very old
In terms of having players who were born a while ago, Memphis and its close competitor in age BYU fairly lap the field in the AP Top 25.