With the college basketball campaign having tipped off, ESPN analyst Jay Bilas has ranked the top teams for the new season.

This week, Bilas released the first iteration of The Bilas Index — who he sees as the best 68 men’s basketball teams in 2025-26.

Clemson made The Bilas Index, coming in at No. 41.

“The Tigers are looking to erase a bad first-round exit — 13 points in the first half?! — with a full rebuild,” Bilas wrote. “It’s not as if they had a choice: They lost all five starters and are now a roster cobbled together with three-star recruits and mostly mid-major transfers. Can they return to the second weekend of the tournament after making an Elite Eight run two seasons ago? It will be tough, but if anyone knows how to pull off a miracle, it’s perennial hot-seat coach Brad Brownell.”

Senior guard Dillon Hunter is the only non-freshman who returns from last season’s team. Brownell landed six transfers during the offseason. He added a lot of size to the roster, signing four post players, while also adding two guards to play alongside Hunter in the backcourt. 

After making a run to the Elite Eight during the 2023-24 season, the fifth-seeded Tigers fell 69-67 to No. 12 seed McNeese in the first round of last season’s NCAA Tournament.

Clemson cruised to a 88-38 win over New Hampshire on Monday in Littlejohn Coliseum to open the 2025-26 season.

The Tigers will host Gardner-Webb on Friday night, with tipoff set for 7 p.m. The game will be televised on ACC Network.

Purdue is the No. 1 team in The Bilas Index, with Houston, defending national champion Florida, UConn and Duke rounding out the top five. 

Other ACC teams in The Bilas Index include Louisville (No. 13), North Carolina (No. 28), NC State (No. 30), Virginia Tech (No. 44), Wake Forest (No. 51), Virginia (No. 53), Pitt (No. 55), Syracuse (No. 57), Georgia Tech (No. 61), SMU (No. 65) and Notre Dame (No. 67).