2023-24 Ivy women’s media day recap and season preview

With the season a few weeks away, the Ivy League hosted Women’s Basketball Media Day on Monday, the first of two media availabilities this week. The event was hosted over Zoom for media members and is available on the conference’s YouTube channel.

The preseason media poll was released last Thursday with Princeton earning all 16 first-place votes. Last year’s Ivy Tournament winner and regular season co-champions are the sixth unanimous pick in league history and the first since Penn in 2016-2017.

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Ivy Hoops Online preseason polls tab Princeton, Yale as women’s and men’s favorites

The Ivy League men’s and women’s preseason media polls amounted to a shrug with Yale emerging on top and a vote of confidence for Princeton, respectively.

So did polls of Ivy Hoops Online’s contributors.

Our contributors unanimously pegged Princeton to finish atop the Ancient Eight on the women’s side, but we were less sure on who would win the Ivy League championship on the men’s side. Penn edged out Columbia by a single point to take second place in our projected women’s standings, while Yale slipped past Harvard by one point to take fourth place, a finish that would knock Harvard out .

Yale received five first-place votes, while Harvard nabbed two and Penn one. While none of our contributors picked Princeton to win the league, three projected the Tigers will place second in the conference standings. We predicted the same order of finish as the men’s and women’s polls. So there’s consensus even amid all the unknowns that the 2020-21 season that wasn’t left the Ivy hoops landscape.

For a preview of what that landscape looks like heading into the first Ivy hoops action in 20 months coming up this week, check out our roundups of the men’s and women’s media days.

Ivy Hoops Online Preseason Polls:

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Ivy League men’s basketball Media Day roundup

Two days after the Media Day for Ivy women’s hoops, the men had their turn at the virtual podium.  A day prior, the results of the preseason poll were released.  While five different teams earned top votes, the overall totals showed no changes from the last day of competition in 2020.

Yale, two-time defending Ivy champion, was again picked to come in first with 115 points and seven first-place votes.  Harvard, the 2019 co-champion, was close behind, tallying 110 points and four first-place votes.  Princeton, the 2017 title winner, closed out the top tier with 108 points and two first-place votes.

Penn, the 2018 co-champion, secured the last slot in the upper division with 93 points and two first-place selections.  Brown, which last held the title in 1986, again found itself behind the Quakers for fifth place with 79 points and a pair of title votes.

Dartmouth, which last entered the winner’s circle in 1959, was tabbed in the six slot with 43 points, four points more than Cornell, which last held the top spot in the Sweet Sixteen season of 2010.  Columbia, the 1968 champion, was projected to finish last with 25 points.

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Ivy League women’s basketball Media Day roundup

One day after releasing the conference’s preseason poll, the Ivy League moved one step closer to normal by hosting the 2021-22 Media Day for women’s basketball Tuesday.  For the first time, the league used a Zoom format to create a stronger connection between the coaches, players and the media.

In Monday’s poll, three-time defending champion Princeton was again picked as the top team with 122 total points and 12 first-place votes.  Penn, the 2019 co-champion, was selected No. 2 with three first-place votes and 108 points. The next three teams were close, with only six points separating Columbia, Yale and Harvard.

The Lions, which earned their first Ivy League Tournament berth in 2020 before the tourney was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, moved up to third with 87 points. The Bulldogs, a third-place team in 2020, dropped to fourth at 82 points.  The Crimson, which finished fifth in 2020, received one first-place vote but missed the upper division by one point.

Cornell, the 2020 seventh-place squad, moved up to sixth for 2022 with 41 points.  Dartmouth and Brown, two teams with new coaching staffs, ended up with the last two spots, with the Big Green’s 29 points two ahead of the Bears.

Tuesday’s Media Day revealed the four tiers apparent in the preseason poll. But there could be a slight reordering near the top.

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Harvard season preview: Slew of sophomore studs looks to lead Crimson

Last season, Harvard lost to Yale in heartbreaking fashion in the first round of the inaugural Ivy League Tournament. The Crimson graduated Siyani Chambers and Zena Edosomwan, both of whom made indelible impacts on the program. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine a successful Harvard season without Siyani Chambers. And yet, the Crimson comes into the 2017-18 season as the preseason favorite, according to the Ivy Preseason Media Poll. While the poll predicted an incredibly close race between Harvard and familiar foes Yale and Princeton, the sentiment of the voters is clear: No one expects Harvard to take a step back this year. Here are the details on how Harvard hopes to turn high expectations on paper into actual success on the court:

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2017-18 Ivy Men’s Basketball Preseason Media Poll released, teleconference highlights

The Ivy men’s basketball preseason media poll was released Tuesday, confirming that the top of the league appears to be a three-way scrum between Harvard, Yale and Princeton at this point. Yale received the most first-place votes (eight) but Harvard garnered the most points overall, awarding the Crimson their first perch atop the media poll standings since the 2014-15 season, which was also the last time Tommy Amaker’s club was Ivy League champion. Princeton received three first-place votes, finishing just behind Yale overall.

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Ivy Preseason Media Poll puts Yale at top of league

Today’s release of the Ivy Preseason Media Poll yielded a predictably unpredictable outlook for the 2015-16 14-game tournament.

Yale was selected to finish first in the poll, garnering 117 points and five first-place votes. But by no means is there an Eli-favoring consensus here. Columbia and Princeton, finishing second and third in the poll respectively, each actually finished with more first-place votes (six) than Yale.

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