Yale Selected as Favorite In 2025-26 Men's Basketball Preseason Poll

Ivy League
1

Yale Selected as Favorite In 2025-26 Men’s Basketball Preseason Poll - Ivy League

2025-26 Ivy League Men’s Basketball Preseason Poll

  1. Yale - 168 (21 first-place votes)
  2. Harvard – 126
  3. Cornell – 124
  4. Princeton – 97
  5. Dartmouth – 72
  6. Brown – 68
  7. Penn – 66
  8. Columbia - 35
2

I’m a little surprised at the love for Cornell. They get Noard back (which was touch and go for a while). Noard/Fiegen/Beccles should be good, but I worry about the two spots up front. Losing Okereke and Ragland plus most of the big backups seems worrisome with only one new big coming in.
A lot of question marks for everybody after Yale, but Cornell has a lot more questions than Harvard or Dartmouth. Or Columbia, but obviously Columbia has a long distance to go from last year.

3

As an interesting puzzle over dinner - one feasible ballot allocation:

Team 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Total Ivy Madness
Yale 21 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 168 100%
Harvard 0 8 8 2 3 0 0 0 126 86%
Cornell 0 8 7 2 4 0 0 0 124 81%
Princeton 0 3 3 4 6 4 1 0 97 48%
Dartmouth 0 0 0 7 5 3 2 4 72 33%
Brown 0 2 0 3 3 4 6 3 68 24%
Penn 0 0 3 3 0 7 4 4 66 29%
Columbia 0 0 0 0 0 3 8 10 35 0%
1 Like
4

I’m convinced that Columbia is way better than what most people think. Everyone has in mind our Ivy League season but our biggest problems where

  1. A very poor system (specially on defense)
  2. Very bad coach decision making
  3. Lost our best player
    The first two should be way better this season (cannot be worse). About the third, I’m curious how Princeton would have done without Lee, Brown without Lilly, Penn without Sam Brown, Cornell without Okereke…
    We already know how to play without De la Rosa, while other teams need to learn how to play without their best players last season.
    We are returning almost the whole core of players that played the whole ivy league last season together, a very good looking O’keefe in developement (basically started playing yesterday) and we have the extra motivation of a new coach. We are a better team that what we showed last season, I believe because the team gave up on the coach at some point.
1 Like
5

I agree with most of this. The problem with returning our core players is that they have only won 7 Ivy League games and are 1-19 in the last 20. There are plenty of reasons for this but that’s all in the past. Hovde’s big challenge is to get the senior class in particular to just play better. They were highly regarded as freshmen and are a talented group that just hasn’t had a lot of success.

6

Penn and Columbia just feel too low to me. I’d take them over Brown and Dartmouth and challenging Princeton/Cornell for the fourth spot

2 Likes
7

Fuel for inspiration and trepidation:

2024-25 Ivy League Men’s Basketball Preseason Poll (First Place Votes)

  1. Princeton – 127 (15)
  2. Yale – 108
  3. Brown – 92 (1)
  4. Cornell – 67
  5. Columbia – 58
  6. Harvard – 55
  7. Penn – 51
  8. Dartmouth – 18

2023-24 Ivy League Men’s Basketball Preseason Poll (First Place Votes)

  1. Yale – 124 (14)
  2. Princeton – 110 (2)
  3. Cornell – 80
  4. Brown – 77
  5. Penn – 68
  6. Harvard – 66
  7. Dartmouth – 28
  8. Columbia – 23

2022-23 Ivy League Men’s Basketball Preseason Poll (First Place Votes)

  1. Penn – 111 (6)
  2. Princeton – 110 (6)
  3. Yale – 106 (3)
  4. Harvard – 86 (1)
  5. Cornell – 54
  6. Brown – 53
  7. Dartmouth – 31
  8. Columbia – 25
8

I think Dartmouth will be pretty good. But I have Brown behind Columbia. Penn is tougher. If the new guys can’t play, it’s hard to see Penn being better than they were a year ago without Sam Brown and Spinoso, even with a great new coach. But if the new guys are healthy, yes Penn should be able to compete as well.

For Columbia, I think the mix is good to play very well with the seniors and some new juice from a new coach. On the other hand, it could be a situation where there are growing pains if the coach decides to focus on the future with his own guys rather than the senior holdovers.

9

I understand the Dartmouth optimism. I have some reservations that graduating a 32% usage rate guard who was pretty efficient with no guards in the chamber having shown it at this level will be too much to overcome. The system change worked for McLaughlin last year but so much was placed on Cornish. If their other guards can replicate efficiency while upping their usage I’ll be wrong.

Penn is a blind bet on Roberts and Mccaffery (with his new influx of players)