Arizona teammates Luke Walton and Jason Gardner were among the five seniors selected to The Associated Press’ preseason All-America team.

David West of Xavier was the leading vote-getter on the team announced Tuesday and he was joined by Kirk Hinrich of Kansas University and Erwin Dudley of Alabama.

Walton and Gardner became the fourth pair of teammates to be selected to the preseason team, which started before the 1986-87 season. One of the other sets also came from Arizona, Mike Bibby and Miles Simon before the 1997-98 season.

Walton and Gardner are two of the five starters returning to the Wildcats, who were ranked No. 1 in the AP’s preseason poll.

The 6-foot-9 West, the Atlantic 10’s player of the year the last two seasons, was named on 43 of the 72 ballots from the national media panel, one more than Walton. Gardner was next with 39 votes, while Hinrich received 35 and Dudley 32.

Western Kentucky senior Chris Marcus was sixth in the voting with 31, while seniors Nick Collison of Kansas (28) and Brandin Knight of Pittsburgh (23) were the only other players to receive more than 20 votes.

Tayshaun Prince of Kentucky was the only senior on last season’s preseason All-America team, but the other four – Jason Williams of Duke, Casey Jacobsen of Stanford, Kareem Rush of Missouri and Frank Williams of Illinois – all declared for the NBA draft as underclassmen.

Jason Williams, last season’s national player of the year, was the only member of the preseason All-America team to earn the first-team postseason honor as well. Jacobsen was on the second team and Prince the third.