FAIRFIELD, Conn. – After going 1-13 in Ivy League play last season, the Columbia men’s basketball team was picked dead last in the 2025-26 media poll, and it wasn’t particularly close.
The all-knowing computers disagreed a bit, taking into account Columbia’s solid nonconference campaign last season and the fact the Lions returned a decent amount of minutes in a year where many others did not.
The story of the 2025-26 Ivy League basketball season has barely begun, but it’s starting to look like the media projections are in big trouble.
Columbia dismantled Fairfield 106-77 Wednesday night at Mahoney Arena to post its fifth straight win and move to 6-1, its only loss at Connecticut. Five of those wins have been by double digits. What made Wednesday’s win even more impressive is that the Lions (6-1) did it without two senior starters in Avery Brown and Zine Eddine Bedri, both out with injuries.
“We just have to take it possession by possession, game by game, work hard every day in practice, senior Kenny Noland said. “We don’t want to get too ahead of ourselves, but I think we’re going to be in a great spot. We have to continue to build, though, get better every day.”
Columbia hit its first five three-pointers and 13 of its first 17 shots from the field Wednesday, and the Stags (4-3) offered no resistance in the second half, allowing 60 points and a virtual layup line for the Lions’ guards. Columbia has posted 1.32 and 1.49 points per possession in its last two wins, shooting 29-for-56 from three-point range, with Blair Thompson hitting 11 of his 15 attempts.
“I feel like the way we play, we hit our bigs and our bigs do a really good job of kicking out and finding open players,” Thompson said. “I think it’s a sign of how unselfish we’re playing and you see the result.”
Kevin Hovde is aware that’s probably not sustainable long-term, and that his biggest issue to fix on Morningside Heights is on the defensive end. The Stags did manage 1.08 points per possession Wednesday, but with the game decided early in the second half, it’s tough to read too much into that number.
“I’ve been around long enough, this is my 15th season in college basketball as a coach that I know that stuff doesn’t mean anything,” Hovde said. “You’re just competing against yourself trying to fix things and get better. We have a good record right now, but sometimes the results can be a distraction. Every day matters, every practice matters, but that outside noise doesn’t mean anything.”
But we might be able to look at Columbia’s somewhat surprising depth that was on full display. Unfortunately, Eddine Bedri’s leg injury might be long-term, but sophomores Ryan Soulis (6-foot-10) and Mason Ritter (6-foot-9) have more than shouldered their share of the load.
Soulis, a rare Ivy League transfer from Richmond, brought range on the offensive end when left alone, and energy on the defensive end, while Ritter – who played sparingly a season ago – made all five of his shots, is shooting 68% from the field this season, and brought a physicality that will be sorely needed going forward.
Freshman Miles Franklin had another solid game (18 points), with fellow first-year Connor Igoe adding nine points for the second straight contest. And we haven’t even gotten to sophomore Gerard O’Keefe, who won an Ivy League Rookie of the Week last season and looked impressive Wednesday with 12 points in 27 minutes.
“We have guys that are really comfortable in their roles right now, and even a spectator can see it with their eyes, we’re playing well, we’re playing together,” Hovde said. “Even with a couple of injuries and Zeen is going to be out for a while, Avery could be back soon (Brown is local to Fairfield and actually played a year at Fairfield Prep on Fairfield’s campus as a freshman in high school, so this was a frustrating game for him to miss, but he could return soon). We have good depth, I think it’s one of the biggest strengths of our team.”
The Lions’ impressive start has moved them up 117 spots in KenPom to No. 130, a solid second behind Yale in the Ivy, their highest mark in a decade, when Kyle Smith was the head coach (and Hovde was an assistant).
However, as seniors Thompson and Kenny Noland (who is shooting 13-for-25 from behind the arc in his last three games as well), things looked pretty rosy at this time last season as well. Columbia had stunned Villanova and began the season 11-1, reaching a high of No. 137 in KenPom, before everything collapsed and the Lions went 1-13 in Ivy League play, its eighth straight losing campaign.
Hovde, of course, was not at Columbia last year, but he was in its best seasons this century a decade ago, and is not going to get ahead of himself before the calendar even turns to December.
“We were a little lucky in the first half, I think some three-point luck that went our way. We shot it well, so it should have been closer at the half,” Hovde said. “We played about as well as we could offensively in the second half. I thought we were tough and stayed with it. We just have to stay with that.”