57 of 58 Votes Put Jeremy Fears Jr. on Top of the AP Preseason All-America Team

Photo: Michigan State Athletics. Jeremy Fears Jr., Michigan State point guard.

Michigan State point guard Jeremy Fears Jr. landed on 57 of 58 ballots for the AP preseason All-America team released Wednesday, one vote short of unanimous. Florida's Thomas Haugh got 56, Vanderbilt's Tyler Tanner 43, and then the panel splintered, with Illinois' David Mirkovic (24) and Arizona's Motiejus Krivas (17) taking the last two spots on fewer than half the ballots.

Three near-locks, then a 19-vote drop

Each of the 58 voters picked five players, so 290 votes went out, by The Dyme's math. The Dyme's count of the AP table adds up to exactly 290, spread across 24 players. Fears, Haugh and Tanner took 156 of them. The other 134 scattered across 21 names.

Tanner to Mirkovic is a 19-vote drop. Mirkovic made the team on 41 percent of ballots, and Krivas on 29 percent. Louisville's Flory Bidunga finished four votes behind Krivas at 13, with UConn's Braylon Mullins at 11 and Duke's John Blackwell at 10 right behind him.

Nineteen players who missed the team still pulled 93 votes, almost a third of everything cast.

Why Fears got 57 votes

Fears averaged 15.2 points and a nation-leading 9.4 assists last season, the second as Michigan State's starter, and the Spartans reached the Sweet 16. He declared for the NBA draft, pulled out, and came back as a second-team All-American with a roster built around him. Michigan State opens No. 6 in the AP poll.

"My job is to get them the ball," he told the AP.

The Dyme already had Fears as the Big Ten preseason Player of the Year at 9.4 assists a game. CBS Sports named him its national preseason Player of the Year too. One voter out of 58 left him off, and that ballot is the only thing standing between Fears and a clean sweep.

Florida owns the board

Haugh led the national champions in scoring at 17.1 points a game, made third-team All-America, and passed on a likely lottery spot to come back for his senior year. Florida is the runaway preseason No. 1 in the AP Top 25.

Add the votes that went to Gators and Florida comes out with 62: Haugh's 56, four for Rueben Chinyelu and two for Alex Condon. Michigan State's 57 all belong to Fears. After those two, nobody tops 18. UConn and Arizona each drew that many, and Duke spread 13 across three players (Blackwell, Patrick Ngongba II and Joaquim Boumtje Boumtje).

"It's national championship or bust for this team," Haugh said.

The two names with a question mark

Mirkovic made the team with 24 votes. He averaged 13.3 points, a team-high 8.0 rebounds and 2.6 assists after coming over from SC Derby in the ABA League, and Illinois made its first Final Four since 2005. He also had offseason foot surgery and is expected to be eased in.

Krivas got there on defense. The 7-2 Lithuanian averaged 10.4 points and 8.2 rebounds, and he also held opponents to 36.7 percent shooting with him on the floor, the lowest in the country according to CBB Analytics. He finished 17th nationally with 73 blocks.

Tanner finished third with 43 votes. He was the only player in the country to average at least 19 points, five assists and two steals last season, and he also tested the draft before coming back for a third year at Vanderbilt. The Commodores opened No. 24, their first preseason ranking since 2015.

All five returned

All five picks are back at the school they played for last season, a point CBS Sports flagged. Three of them, Fears, Haugh and Tanner, tested or passed on the NBA draft to return, according to the AP. In a sport run through the portal, the preseason All-America team is five guys who stayed put, and all five lead ranked teams: No. 1 Florida, No. 3 Illinois, No. 5 Arizona, No. 6 Michigan State and No. 24 Vanderbilt.

The best finish off the team belongs to Louisville's Bidunga at 13 votes, four ballots behind the fifth spot. For the full preseason poll, Florida opened No. 1 with 47 of 59 first-place votes.

Photo: Florida Gators. Thomas Haugh, Florida forward.

Sources

• AP via ESPN: Spartans' Fears, Gators' Haugh near-unanimous picks as preseason All-Americans. Oct. 21, 2026. Full vote table from the 58-member panel, 2025-26 stats, rankings, quotes, Krivas defensive numbers via CBB Analytics.
• AP News: Men's Preseason All-America Team. Oct. 21, 2026. Team list with votes.
• CBS Sports: 2026-27 AP preseason All-America team. Oct. 21, 2026. All five returning to the same school, CBS preseason Player of the Year, rankings of each player's team.
• Ballot totals (290 votes, 93 to players off the team, school totals, percentages) are Dyme calculations from the AP vote table.