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Ivy League Announces Men’s Basketball Major Awards and All-Ivy Teams
Ivy League Announces Men’s Basketball Major Awards and All-Ivy Teams1920×1080 890 KB

Men’s Basketball 3/12/2025 1:00:00 PM

Ivy League Announces Men’s Basketball Major Awards and All-Ivy Teams

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PRINCETON, N.J. – The culmination of the 2024-25 season will be on full display this weekend as Ivy Madness crowns a champion and sends its automatic qualifier to the NCAA Tournament. But before Cornell, Dartmouth, Princeton or Yale can punch a ticket, the Ivy League has announced the 2024-25 major award winners and All-Ivy teams.

Winning both the 2024-25 Ivy League Player and Defensive Player of the Year was Yale’s Bez Mbeng. While it is his first Player of the Year award, Mbeng is no stranger to being recognized as the league’s top defensive player, this honor being his third-consecutive Defensive Player of the Year award. He is the first player to be a three-time recipient of the award, instituted in 2009, and the first to win both awards. Mbeng averaged 15.4 points, 6.2 rebounds, 6.0 assists and 2.1 steals per game in Ivy League play, with his points and rebounds averages ranking in the top 10 in the Ivy League and his assists and steals averages leading all Ivy League players. Mbeng led the nation with three triple-doubles, two of them coming in the last four games. The last of which was a 20-point, 11-rebound, 11-assist performance against Harvard.

First-year standout Robert Hinton led Harvard in scoring in route to being unanimously voted the 2024-25 Ivy League Rookie of the Year. Hinton came out of the gates with back-to-back 20-point games, scoring 27 in a win over Marist and following it up with 26 points, 8 rebounds, and 4 assists against Navy. He had 11 double-digit scoring games in Ivy League play, including one 30-point game and three 20-point games. He notched a season-high 31 points against Princeton on Feb. 21, the fifth-highest scoring game by an Ivy League player this season.

The Dartmouth coaching staff, led by David McLaughlin, was named the 2024-25 Ivy League Coaching Staff of the Year. The Big Green posted both their first winning regular season record and Ivy League record since 1998-99 and clinched their first-ever berth to Ivy Madness. Dartmouth gained 6 wins in Ivy League play, going from 2-12 in 2023-24 to 8-6 in 2024-25, one of the largest single-season turnarounds in recent Ivy League history.

Led by unanimous selection Mbeng, Yale held three of the expanded six-member All-Ivy First Team with the fourth- and fifth-highest scoring players in league play, John Poulakidas and Nick Townsend also being selected. Poulakidas averaged 18.2 points per game while Townsend averaged 17.4 points and 7.5 rebounds per game. Xaivian Lee, who ranked third in the league in scoring with 18.5 points per game, sixth with 6.5 rebounds per game, and second with 4.9 assists per game, was the only other unanimous First Team All-Ivy selection. Kino Lilly Jr. of Brown and Ryan Cornish of Dartmouth were also named to the first team. Lilly Jr. ranked top 10 in the Ivy League in scoring and assists while Cornish ranked second in scoring and three-pointers made.

Dartmouth and Princeton added Second Team All-Ivy selections in Brandon Mitchell-Day and Caden Pierce, respectively. Cornell had two honorees named Second Team All-Ivy in AK Okereke and Nazir Williams, and Penn’s Sam Brown, who led the Ivy League in scoring with 19.3 points per game, rounded out the All-Ivy Second Team.

Harvard’s Chandler Piggé and Cornell’s Cooper Noard earned honorable mention nods.

Additionally, one student-athlete from each institution was recognized for their commitment in the classroom and on the court as members of the 2024-25 Ivy League Men’s Basketball Academic All-Ivy team. Brown’s Aaron Cooley, Columbia’s Robbie Stankard, Cornell’s Cooper Noard, Dartmouth’s Jackson Munro, Harvard’s Evan Nelson, Penn’s George Smith, Princeton’s Blake Peters and Yale’s Nick Townsend were each named to the team.

PLAYER OF THE YEAR
Bez Mbeng, Yale (Sr., G)

DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE YEAR
*Bez Mbeng, Yale (Sr., G)

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR
*Robert Hinton, Harvard (Fy., G)

COACHING STAFF OF THE YEAR
Dartmouth

FIRST TEAM ALL-IVY^
Kino Lilly Jr., Brown (Sr., G)
Ryan Cornish, Dartmouth (Sr., G)
*Xaivian Lee, Princeton (Jr., G)
*Bez Mbeng, Yale (Sr., G)
John Poulakidas, Yale (Sr., G)
Nick Townsend, Yale (Jr. F)

SECOND TEAM ALL-IVY
AK Okereke, Cornell (Jr., F)
Nazir Williams, Cornell (Sr., G)
Brandon Mitchell-Day, Dartmouth (Jr., F)
Sam Brown, Penn (So., G)
Caden Pierce, Princeton (Jr., F)

HONORABLE MENTION
Chandler Piggé, Harvard (Jr., G)
Cooper Noard, Cornell (Jr., G)

23

A little surprised that Kino was First Team and very surprised that the second place team in the league didn’t get anybody on the First Team.

Pretty much everything else makes sense to me.

24

At first I did a double take when I saw Brown there instead of Roberts, who clearly had better all-around season numbers. But if you just look at the Ivy games, it is Brown who had better stats.

25

I think the fact that he hired an NIL agent to transfer out so that he’s one and done likely hurt his chances to get All-Ivy votes.

26

Several surprises here (at least for me).

  • Lee and Mbeng were the only unanimous choices for 1st Team. Townsend seemed like a lock to be unanimous and Poulakidas seemed probable. Also, since Mbeng wasn’t a unanimous POY, it’s safe to assume Lee got at least one POY vote.

  • Dartmouth wins for coaching (Ivy honoring entire staff this year, which is nice). I expected Yale but the Big Green were picked last and finished 3rd. Deserving choice.

  • Pierce made 2nd Team despite his banged-up, down year. And Lilly made 1st team despite a relative down year. Feels like both players got “respect” votes, which I understand.

  • Six members on 1st Team allowed for an “extra” honoree on 2nd Team (probably Brown or Pierce). 7th place or not, it would have been weird to have the league’s leading scorer NOT make All-Ivy. So props to Sam Brown.

27

I think the choices make sense.
My one observation is it feels like
there are ties to get an extra guy
recognition every year. Probably
not a bad practice. Congratulations
to all of them.

28

Why would that impact recognition for this year? Hinton is likely gone.

29

I don’t think Hinton has made any moves to transfer out. Roberts has. And he transferred in in the first place. Do I have any evidence that this affected the vote? No, but I think Ivy voters don’t like the appearance of a mercenary Ivy player.

30

They better get used to it.

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31

I don’t think coaches care about that and they don’t pay attention to rumors on blogs. Roberts was the 2nd best player on the 7th place team. Here’s a contrarian view on the guys who play 1-2 years and leave: Embrace them like the rest of the country. Having them makes your team better. Wolf for 2 years, Mack for 1 makes your team better. Try to convince them to stay once they blow up. The rest of the country manages their rosters this way and maybe the Ivy League should too.

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32

Six player first-team Ivy team selections is interesting, but a case can be made for all of the players. No need for further speculation, well-deserved to them

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33

There were plenty of rumors that Mack was going to leave last year before he did. There hasn’t been anything similar with Hinton. Instead, this story in The Crimson from just a few weeks ago makes it sounds like he’s happy where he is and wants to stay:

The difference was that Mack ended up at Harvard because he was overlooked by other schools; Hinton ended up at Harvard because, despite having plenty of other interest, it was where he wanted to be. That doesn’t mean he will definitely stay; the same was true of Okpara last year until Stanford came along with their offer. It just means that he won’t definitely leave, like Mack last year.

(Funny addendum: Mack has struggled so much for Georgetown this year, just like he did for us in Ivy league play last season, that he’s probably going to get his NIL money massively cut, if they even want to bring him back. I’d guess there’s a nonzero chance that he ends up back with us, if the NIL money out there has dried up enough)

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34

I don’t think transfer rumors affected All-Ivy voting. I think it’s as simple as Sam Brown being the #1 scorer in league play (19.3 ppg). If Roberts were #1, he would have gotten the nod instead.

35

If NCAA D1 basketball goes down the path that some expect, perhaps one-bid leagues ought to try something new and create an all-star team to get the auto bid to the NCAA tournament. As it is, almost all the top players for the mid-majors are being poached the next season by the big conferences, so why not get them all together for a last hurrah? Meanwhile, the league could create a prize pool for the team that wins the conference title.

36

Hilarious! This is satire, right?

37

Unfortunately, creative responses to the earthquakes now affecting revenue sports are hard to distinguish from satire.

The ILT and all the other one-bid tournaments are already marketing disasters for those conferences. They get almost no attention or coverage until the final round, if then, and they frequently put much worse teams into the NCAA tournament, hurting the conference even more. Then every all-conference player with remaining eligibility transfers to a multi-bid league the next season. It’s not a sustainable setup.

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38

This is the main reason I don’t like for non power 4 conferences to decide their bids via a tournament. You already have a league with lower overall level and there is a high risk that you don’t even send your best team to represent the level of the league at the NCAA tournament. This year, for example, there have been plenty of upsets in mid-major tournaments. James Madison, UNLV, UTSA, Gonzaga/Portland, all were favorites for their auto-bid and good teams, won the regular season title and lost in the championship, most likely meaning they won’t get a bid. This only hurts this conferences as their chances of becoming more relevant by an NCAA tournament upset decreased by a lot. That’s why I think smaller conferences should aim for a system that tries to send their best team, until you are in a position to send more than one team regularly.

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39

Of course, the reverse argument is that a conference winner in the regular season isn’t necessarily the team that is playing the best basketball come tournament time. 2011 Butler and 2006 George Mason were not regular season champs of the Horizon or Colonial Leagues. Same with VCU in 2011 or Florida Gulf Coast in it’s run from 15 seed to the Regional Final. So I don’t know that your theory really holds up when compared with the Cinderellas that made major runs.

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40

If the sole goal of the league is to send its strongest representative to the NCAA tournament, you are absolutely right although you could argue that the team playing best at the end (i.e. winning the conference tournament) is the strongest representative, albeit mitigated by the fact that they’ll probably get a lower seed). But that isn’t the sole goal. Another goal should be to provide meaningful games to as many Ivy athletes and fans as possible. With the current structure of Ivy Madness, with only the top four teams qualifying, you had six men’s teams competing for slots right to the end of the season (I’m fuzzy on whether Harvard was eliminated before the last weekend because of the relevant tiebreaker, so maybe only five). That provided excitement for league games (including providing previously eliminated teams with the opportunity to play spoiler) that would have been absent this year when Yale ran away with the regular season title. And then you have three Ivy tournament games, which are awesome experiences for the participating teams. Last year’s final, with Yale winning on a buzzer beater, was in my lifetime top ten games attended in person (# 1 on my list was the 1968 Harvard ‘win’ over Yale 29-29 (also the worst experience I had at a game!) so I’ve been around for a while). Will I be hugely disappointed if Yale loses a game this weekend? You bet but I’ll have enjoyed the ride and am willing to take the risk. The games this month are called madness for a reason and I’m good with extending that to the Ivy League as well as the NCAA tournament.

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