2024-25 Conference Previews: one-bids, vol. 2 (2/2)
...and the Horizon League and Ivy League (split for time)
Hello! As laid out in the season preview for this newsletter, we’re changing up preview season a little. Previews will be released in alphabetical order, but somewhat differently than usual: one P5 a day, one two-bid(ish) conference a day, and one grab bag of one-bid leagues a day. One of each will be free for all to read. THIS ONE IS A FREE POST! You should still sign up for a paid subscription to read about the other 25 or so conferences that won’t be free.
You can find all of these in the 2024-25 previews section of this website. On with the show. ALSO: Click through to read the whole thing. This is too long for email.
Horizon League
Tier 1
Northern Kentucky
Oakland
Milwaukee
Purdue Fort Wayne
Wright State
Tier 2
Cleveland State
Youngstown State
Tier 3
Robert Morris
Green Bay
Tier 4
IU Indy
Detroit Mercy
If you like the Summit League but wish it had a tighter top pack and/or broadcasted its games on a streaming service most people have (ESPN+), the Horizon League may be a good call for the bored viewer. The number of times that the Horizon (or MAC, too) have smartly scheduled their affairs for Friday evenings over the years where you’ve got little else to watch…man. Oddly fond memories of watching peak Valparaiso and Oakland in 2016 at a Knoxville bar, things of that nature.
The Horizon has suffered numerous losses over the years, most notably Butler (2012) and Valpo (2017), and as a collective it’s nowhere near as strong as it was 10-15 years ago. However, more than some of their contemporaries, I do think they’ve settled nicely into being the 20th-22nd best conference in the league basically every year. Plus, they ranked 3rd in the Will Warren Watchability Beane Counter last season, so how bad can it really be?
In every conference I preview Tier 1 is a list of teams that I expect to contend for the conference title the entire way. Usually I don’t run into situations where it’s half the conference and they’re all within a 50-spot range or so, but no one here returns more than 64% of scoring and everyone has at least one major, glaring hole. Horizon! Northern Kentucky is my best guess as to who takes this; with eight straight seasons above .500 in conference play and 104 Horizon League wins it’s largely been them and Wright State at the top. NKU brings bring three starters, with Sam Vinson and Trey Robinson headlining the group.
The use case for them running this league depends on good health. Vinson only got 11 games into last season before blowing out his ACL. NKU had roughly the same performance before and after, but the story runs deeper than that. Adjusted for shooting luck, NKU was 7.3 points better per 100 possession with Vinson than without. In the 440 possessions he and Robinson got together, NKU played like a top-170 group with a defense that forced turnovers on nearly 25% of possessions. In a league with a fairly slim margin between top and bottom groups that’ll play quite well. The one thing that worries me, as it did last year, is that last year’s group was awful shooting-wise, scoring the 309th-most points from threes of any team in the nation. This year’s roster projects to have very similar struggles without an obvious plus shooter. If their defense can squeak out a top-100 finish they can still take the HL.
You remember Oakland quite well from last year when they won the Horizon and defeated Kentucky in the Round of 64. Greatest Offense of All Time Kentucky, you know. Whole big thing. The problem with that excitement: four of the five starters have moved on to either a new school (Trey Townsend, Arizona) or a new career (Jack Gohlke, CPA). The positive slant is that DQ Cole, last year’s starting 2-ish guard, will be back, and this may be an offense built more around Cole’s ability to get downhill. As a ball-handler he’s got little experience; as a downhill driver he was a bit of a secret sauce to go with Gohlke’s lethal shooting and Townsend’s excellent post moves.
Two things generally make the offense go: one absolutely bonkers white boy on the perimeter and one very good post-mover down low. There’s a couple options here, but the most proven college-level guy for #1 is Jayson Woodrich of Cleveland State. Woodrich averaged a three-point attempt every four minutes last season that he was on the court, peaking with a 5-11 performance against Western Michigan. (Alternately, Chang Hoth (not white) and Malcolm Christie (Canadian, white) are good candidates.) Down low, the post-move king could be Tuburu Naivalurua, who backed up Townsend last year. He needs to become much more efficient (43rd-percentile) in the post, but he was secretly very good as a rim protector last season. This is a work in progress but it’s Greg Kampe and the baseline is generally pretty high.
Milwaukee did not lose their excellent coach in Bart Lundy, as was originally feared, and only lost two full-time starters. The problem with life in the Horizon League these days is that both starters went to the portal to go elsewhere, including 21 PPG scorer BJ Freeman (to Arizona State). Lundy and crew have the odd sensation of returning the third-most minutes in the conference, including three senior starters, but simultaneously having to rework an offense built around Freeman as lead initiator, driver, shot-taker, foul-drawer extraordinaire after two years with him in the driver’s seat. At 6’6” with an ability to post up and run an offense, he was a relatively unique problem for defenses.
No one really lines up 1:1 as a Freeman replacement this year, unless you think of Themus Fulks from Louisiana as the next Horizon star. Fulks is much more a playmaker than a scorer, which can lend itself to the Lundy offense that produces lots of catch-and-shoot threes but likely promises a serious downturn in rim gravity. Either he or AJ McKee of Queens, who plays much more like a slashing downhill wing than a true point guard, will have to fill in to ensure this works the way it did last year. (Keep eyes on Erik Pratt and Kentrell Pullian as well.) The main message: a star is gone, and the work to replace him will require a more committee-based approach. But: I like Lundy a lot and think he’ll figure something out.
Purdue Fort Wayne, fka IPFW fka IU-PU-FW, returns the most production in a conference with a lot of wobbliness to it. Most important: four of five starters are back! From a team that won 23 games! In theory, this should be enough to make them a fairly obvious favorite to take the Horizon. There are three players here who scored 13+ PPG last season. Jon Coffman is probably a top-four coach in the league. There’s a lot to like here, so naturally, I’ve got to hunt for the flaws.
I ended up playing Fort Wayne fourth in a very even top five because of all the things I like about Coffman, the same limitations that have prevented IPFW from making good on extremely promising November/December/January runs are going to continue to exist here. No Coffman team has ranked in the top 300 of opponent 2PT% since 2018-19. That won’t change this year with the frontcourt intact. Coffman teams similarly don’t rebound well (-4.5 rebound margin per 100 in four of the last five years), hold onto the ball (four 240th+ place finishes in offensive TO% in last five years), and frequently go through serious scoring droughts. (Fort Wayne ranked #1 in 8-0 runs last year in the Horizon…and #5 in 8-0 droughts.) This is an explosive product in both directions. Until I see evidence that said product is capable of 40-minute efforts 18 straight games I’m holding out on buying in.
Wright State has to start anew under Clint Sargent, a 36-year old career assistant who spent the last eight years as one at Wright. I think he’s ready for this; the main question will be if he continues the Nagy style (pound the post, pound it again, kick it out to open shooters when needed). Given the construct of the roster, which features big-bodied Brandon Noel (14.5 PPG, 8 RPG), it’s probably wise to keep things similar with some change-ups somewhere.
The problem is that Noel isn’t that much of a post-first guy, as the departed AJ Braun at center had double the post possessions per game. Noel functions more as a space-y 5 that can shoot it (40% on 77 attempts from 3), and the team is going to seriously miss the perimeter gravity that Trey Calvin and Tanner Holden provided. Unless this roster is much better than I’m anticipating defensively they’re going to need to score a lot to win games. Who’s going to step up? This roster has a ton of #3 options but no one obvious as a #1. Noel’s my best guess. If someone does make the leap there’s zero questions about playable depth here, which keeps them in the title hunt.
Tier two is an intriguing one: two schools that regularly beat preseason projections with fair ease and have a player or two on each roster that seems like an All-Horizon candidate, but lack in true star power and have unproven coaches up top. Cleveland State beat out Youngstown State by a hair for the simple fact that their path to scoring points is easier to visualize than Youngstown’s, though not by much.
CSU lost their four best players from last year’s roster, which is a huge problem, but you can do worse than adding lower-end bench options from South Carolina and Wichita State to the fold. No one here is really proven, per se, but Tevin Smith is the best player on the roster and had some real juice last year. Cleveland State was 11.6 points better per 100 possessions with Smith, who largely plays the 2 and 3 and is a terrific slasher. Bonus: he shot 44% from three last year. If that can hold with a much larger burden on him offensively, it’ll play really well. If not, CSU needs Ebrima Dibba, a former Coastal Carolina standout point guard, to make his own leap. Daniyal Robinson has done nicely for himself through two seasons so the floor feels solid here, but the ceiling may be limited.
Youngstown is starting over under Ethan Faulkner, a career assistant everywhere from NAIA to D1 and is the ripe old age of 34, or three years older than myself. All five starters from last year’s 22-win team are gone, and Youngstown is not exactly a school you can reload with ease at. No returner is an obvious Yes Man, so you need to look at the transfers. The highest-ceiling guy is Jason Nelson, who comes over from VCU and is a very obvious candidate for Defensive Player of the Year. The problem: Nelson is atrocious offensively and shot 39% on twos. The two NEC/MAAC transfers, Siem Uijtendaal (Canisius) and Nico Galette (Sacred Heart), are both solid but Galette’s lead-scoring experience has been dramatically inefficient (93 ORtg on 28% Usage last year).
My big swing-and-hope here would be NAIA transfer Ty Harper, a 41% 3PT shooter, but the likelihood is that this is scoring by committee. No one makes sense as a true point, but an offense with lots of off-ball action and Gabe Dynes cleaning things up at the rim is reasonable enough. This is a team that I could either really enjoy or really be bummed by come February. The roster structure makes sense, but the roster talent may not.
Tier 3: two wacky cases of teams that couldn’t look more different and I genuinely wouldn’t be that surprised by any finish from. Robert Morris beats out Green Bay because I’m going to take a guess that Andy Toole is a superior coach to Doug Gottlieb, but who knows. Toole’s last four seasons have been so rough that I’m struggling to recall why I liked him so much to begin with.
Anyway, RMU went 10-22 last year and had the 328th-best defense in the sport, which in a conference like the Horizon doesn’t even get you the status of a bottom-three defense in the league. Bobby Mo lost four starters from that team but made some interesting portal adds, two of which are to the point that I have no choice but to think they’ll be somewhat frisky. The big returner is Justice Williams, but Williams was the fourth-worst shooter in the Horizon among 51 qualifying players. The portal adds of real interest are Kam Woods from NC State and Josh Omojafo via D2 Gannon. Woods is a talent upside swing on his fourth school in four seasons, only one of which (NCA&T in 2022-23) saw him play well. Still! He can score. Omojafo played for a Gannon side that was arguably the most exciting offensive team in basketball last year. He’s an utter delight in transition as a sprinting wing.
Green Bay had an awesome one-and-done run with Sunny Wicks last year and now has to go back to being Green Bay. Doug Gottlieb is here for Reasons I Cannot Comprehend, and I do not think that this will work out because I have a functioning brain, but I will hold off on that. Instead, the roster. There’s a couple of solid returning pieces here - Preston Ruedinger and Foster Wonders - but the highlights are two lightly-used P5 transfers and a top-150 recruit. Donovan Santoro (Providence) and Isaiah Miranda (Oklahoma State) come in with very little to go off of stats-wise, but Miranda is a former top-50 recruit at 247 and has a little bit of a jumper for a 7-footer. I like that pickup and think he’ll be a hard cover in the Horizon with good health.
The real upside play is that top-150 recruit. Jeremiah Johnson played well in OTE last year, and if nothing else he gives Gottlieb a willing and ready scorer at point to begin the season. The main question is if Johnson can create for anyone else. Like pretty much everyone on the planet, I’ll tune in when I think they can win a game to see how things go. Frankly given that their head coach is tweeting every hour about his radio show I’ve got little faith.
Tier 4 is the pits, two teams that have nothing going on but will hope to find something to build off of for 2025-26. IU Indy beats out Detroit Mercy by way of making a genuinely impressive hire in Paul Corsaro from UIndy (not the same team). Does IU Indy have a single minute returning from 2023-24 or more than one player on their roster who scored a point in D-1 last year (a Manhattan transfer)? No! Do they have a sort of D2 superteam, headlined by Wayne State (NE) transfer Alec Millender (43% 3PT, 45% midrange)? They…kinda do! I’m very intrigued what this looks like simply because it can’t be worse, and Corsaro should be able to install his standard stuff with four UIndy guys on the roster. What that looks like: heavy P&R, heavy on the kickouts.
UDM hired Mark Montgomery from Michigan State’s assistant pool after he completed a nine-year tenure at Northern Illinois beforehand. Similarly, I don’t think this can possibly be worse than it was last year, when they went 1-31. Just three players return, none of whom I recommend stats-wise, but Montgomery is known for quality recruiting and was the primary recruiter for one Draymond Green back in the day. The Izzo coaching tree has largely consisted of some of the easiest-to-snap branches in dendrological history, with Drew Valentine probably being the second-best output. TBD on this one.
FOUR PREDICTIONS:
AJ McKee of Milwaukee is the Horizon Player of the Year.
The best team in KenPom finishes outside of the top 100 for the third straight year, continuing the longest streak in conference history.
The breakout star of the year is Oakland’s Malcolm Christie, who makes 8+ threes in a single game at one point.
Doug Gottlieb unintentionally commits 5+ NCAA violations throughout the course of the season.
Ivy League
Tier 1
Princeton
Tier 2
Yale
Cornell
Tier 3
Penn
Columbia
Brown
Tier 4
Harvard
Dartmouth
For all the fun one can make of this conference off the court they’re pretty dangerous on it. Last year’s win by Yale over Auburn was the conference’s 8th in the last 15 years. They haven’t received a seed better than 12 since 2003, but they’re 6-7 in the Round of 64 from 2010 to now. This is despite there being no NCAAT in 2020 and the Ivy opting out of the 2021 edition. Among single-bid leagues, only the Horizon has overachieved more over the last 1.5 decades, solely thanks to Butler’s two runs. You can and probably should make the argument that this is the scariest conference to see on the other side of your matchup if you’re a 2-5 seed in March.
This year’s grouping is especially pretty scary. The Ivy ranks #1 in America in terms of returning production by conference, which is remarkable when fifth-year seniors are still going around and the Ivy explicitly does not do that part of the job. This is after a 12th and 13th-place finish the last two seasons, which are two of the five times they’ve ever been top-15. Good mix of coaches, good mix of overlooked talent, very watchable basketball from most teams here.
I don’t know that this year’s Ivy will be quite as nice as last year’s Ivy, with three teams that spent most of the year inside the KenPom top 100, but it’ll be pretty solid. The best of these, and our lone Tier 1 representative, is Princeton.
You may remember Princeton from such films as Beating Arizona and Beating Missouri, but you may have forgotten their tremendous follow-up to those wins last year. Princeton went 24-5, finished top-70 in KenPom, and is perhaps the most underrated winner of the committee’s new focus on Wins Above Bubble. If the 2024 NCAA Tournament had been seeded by WAB, Princeton would’ve been in the First Four instead of barely being considered at all for an at-large. That’s pretty meaningful for an Ivy that has NEVER had two bids.
Princeton gets to #1, and their own tier, for a multitude of reasons. I use five different ratings sets, weighted in various ways, to produce these preseason rankings. Are they good? Who knows. But Princeton was #1 in all five, a serious rarity in any mid-major conference. The Tigers return the two best players in this league in Caden Pierce and Xaivian Lee, which is stunning considering the loss of Matt Allocco (aged out of Ivy play) to Notre Dame. In the event you have not seen these guys play basketball: whew. 6’7” big Pierce is a wing/center hybrid who averaged 9.2 RPG last year, shot 35% on 78 threes, 61% from two, and threw in a 20% Assist% for good measure. Bart Torvik’s website has a player comps tool where you can see how anyone’s stats match up to previous players. Pierce’s closest comparison is Baylor Scheierman. That’s pretty scary!
Imagine a world where Lee, then, is the second-best returner on any roster. Lee posted a +6.6 BPM last year, a 116 ORtg on 29% USG, a 24% Assist%, shot 53% 2PT/34% 3PT, and had a sub-10% TO%. All of that as a sophomore stepping into a completely new role. Below is the complete list of players, since 2007, who have posted a 115 ORtg on 25%+ USG%, a DREB% of 20% or better, an Assist% of 20% or better, a BPM of +5 or better, and were 6’5” or shorter.
That is a damn list, people. I am not lost on the fact that the only other sophomore on it was Brandin Podziemski, who went in the first round of the Draft. Lee’s story is pretty cool, as he would be the second South Korean player (Ha Seung-Jin, 2004) to play in the NBA if he makes it. I’m feeling good about assuming he will.
So: you have Baylor Scheierman and Brandon Podziemski, in some form, on the same roster. How does that go wrong? Well, the loss of a second starter, Zach Martini (to Rutgers), does complicate things. Blake Peters is the other returning starter here, but Peters had major struggles last season, shooting 32% from three after a 40% sophomore campaign. If he can be closer to 2023 than 2024, it will help, but he’s also pretty invisible defensively. Princeton did not add a single piece from the portal, which means that you have two stars in Lee/Pierce, a starter-level figure in Peters, and a lot of other guys that have yet to really prove it in college.
Four of the components of the rating system are player-based. The fifth is coaching. The model I looked at earlier this summer has Mitch Henderson as the best coach in this league, and frankly, I have no real argument to that. His on-court designs are pretty amazing in their own right, and designing a top-30 offense at an Ivy takes serious work. The off-court development is of greater note. The year before The Year, Lee had a BPM of -0.7 and shot 26% from three. Pierce: +2.2 BPM, miniscule usage offensively. 2022-23 Matt Allocco: +1.6 BPM, negative A:TO. Martini: -0.3 BPM, 102 ORtg on 15% USG. Every single season, Henderson has at least one player go from anonymity to All-Ivy because of the development program they have here. I look forward to seeing who it is this winter. (Please let the record show that my bet was Deven Austin.)
If Princeton doesn’t fully find their footing, Tier 2 are the next-best bets. The #1 coach in the league is Henderson, but #2 is James Jones at Yale. The two of them together are a stunning pair for any conference to have, but particularly the Ivy, which does carry with it a set of academic restrictions and various logistical annoyances unlike pretty much any other Division I conference. Jones has now overseen the six best seasons in Yale history across his 25-season run. For all the good Princeton did last year, Yale has now posted two straight seasons, and three in four, where they’ve had a top 100 offense and defense. The rest of the Ivy combined, since 2018: zero.
The downside for 2024-25 Yale is the loss of three excellent starters in August Mahoney (graduation), Matt Knowling (also graduation), and Danny Wolf (Michigan, as a graduate student). The upside: if Princeton has the #1 and #2 players back in the league, Yale might have #4 and #5. (We’ll touch on #3 later.) Bez Mbeng and John Poulakidas return for their senior seasons. Poulakidas was the hero of Yale’s remarkable Round of 64 upset of Auburn, but Mbeng was arguably the superior player throughout the season as a whole.
When Mbeng and Poulakidas were the guard pairing last year, Yale had a +16.5 per 100 net rating adjusted for opponent. For context, that’s a better season-long net rating than 7 seed Washington State had. Poulakidas is the superior offensive piece, a delight as an on-ball handler who’s hyper-efficient with a phenomenal jumper. Mbeng is more of a playmaker for others than for self, but his real value comes defensively, where his +2.9 DBPM last season was second-best in the Ivy behind Chris Manon and the same as guys like Garwey Dual or Deivon Smith nationally. Considering the guys directly ahead and behind him in Ivy DBPM are in the SEC (Manon) or Big Ten (Wolf), getting Mbeng back for a fourth year is giant.
Now, Jones has to rebuild once again. Like most Ivies, Yale doesn’t really build through the portal, but it’s a rare confluence where they have two very good players back and they’re pretty old on the whole. New projected starters Yassine Gharam and Nick Townsend are both juniors, with Gharram sort of a Mbeng-in-training (wobbly offense, quality defense) and Townsend the new Matt Knowling. The big thing: finding your fifth guy and finding your bench guys. Only those four plus Casey Simmons played real minutes last year, and there’s no obvious solution screaming at center or off the bench. Jones is a tremendous developer, so I expect someone to pop up as with Princeton; I just don’t know who. (Samson Aletan is my guess here.)
Cornell has a lesser rebuild, but still some sort of one after Brian Earl left for William & Mary. The good news is Jon Jaques, the new HC, was under Earl for 11 years and will probably run a similar system on both ends. Gone are multiple starters and a couple of followers with Earl to W&M, so this is a somewhat-younger Big Red squad, but still one with eight guys back that played real minutes last season. This collective group shot 59% on twos and 33% on threes last year, so I’d venture to say the offense should be just fine.
The two guys I think can/should step into leading roles of some sort are Guy Ragland Jr. and Nazir Williams, starter-ish guys a year ago that will be asked to do more than they have thus far in college. Plus: seniority! The overall net rating wasn’t much different when both were together versus separated a year ago, but the offensive efficiency was bonkers: 116.5 opponent-adjusted points per 100 possessions, which is what Pittsburgh (the #30 offense in basketball) did for a full season. The P&R with these two running it is pretty dangerous; Williams can shoot, drive, and pass, while Ragland is a fabulous deep shooter (40%) at his 6’8” height.
Contrary to the first two teams, Cornell does have a couple other pieces I already have faith in without additional convincing: Cooper Noard, a speedy and fun shooter that runs off of screens a lot, and AK Okereke, a very efficient wing that might be the best overall defender this roster has. Of course, I don’t think Okereke is exactly great defensively, he’s just fine. That’s the limiting factor here. Cornell’s offense probably can and should finish top 100 again nationally, but defensively, there are no stoppers, and at no point during Earl’s tenure did they ever manage to find a rim protector. The best-case scenario here is a defense that cracks the top-200, which likely won’t be enough to win this conference. Better spam the points button.
In case you’ve forgotten, the Ivy went to a very silly four-team tournament a few years back to determine their NCAA Tournament bid recipient. In all likelihood, one of these Tier 3 teams is fighting for the fourth spot. At best: third.
Your best hope among this group is Penn, who has an unusual (for the Ivy) mix of transfer talent and returning production. Penn has three starters back but lost their two best players to the portal…and then proceeded to pluck a guy from a service academy that was awesome at his previous stop, though is coming off of a season-ending injury. Steve Donahue’s Ivy bonafides will never truly die, I suppose.
Anyway, Sam Brown, George Smith, and Nick Spinoso are all back to start again. I think Brown is the best offensive piece (42% from three!) and Spinoso the best defensive piece (4.4% Block%, high DREB%, and a high Assist%!) here. But that transfer, baby. Ethan Roberts was quite the pluck from Donahue: 113 ORtg on 20% USG, 54% 2PT/40% 3PT in 2022-23. Roberts transferred to Drake last year but got hurt and never touched the floor. Roberts compares favorably to Matt Allocco on last year’s Princeton team: a slasher and shooter with the capacity to spread the floor in a way no one else on the roster really can. If only Roberts was surrounded by that Princeton supporting cast.
Beyond that, I think Brown has become a hair underrated just because it’s so hard to crack that top Ivy group if you don’t have the built-in brand to work with. Brown’s best-ever KenPom finish is 138th, their last NCAA Tournament bid was in 1986, and their 8-6 Ivy record last year represented the school’s best in 16 years. Tough sledding, but I think Mike Martin’s done a reasonable and solid job in a tough spot to win. Anyway, beyond our next team and Princeton, this is the third-highest amount of returning production in the league.
I mentioned players #1, #2, #4, and #5 in a theoretical Ivy player ranking; here’s #3 and, oh, #9 or so. Kino Lilly Jr., who played 94%! of available minutes last season, is the obvious headline-getter. He averaged 18.8 PPG, put up 48 points in the two-game Ivy League Tournament, and his efficiency stats are skewed a bit by a shot diet so difficult that you sort of have to grade him on a curve. But: I do not think he’s the best overall player Brown has. That would be Nana Owusu-Anane, who posted a 111 ORtg on 24% USG and was Brown’s best defensive player last year by some distance. In wins over Yale and Princeton in March, NOA put up 39 total points on just 19 shots; he is really, really good and has quality handling skills for a big man. This is a great duo. If only there was much else to work with, but hey, they’re fun.
Sixth place in our poll here is Columbia, who returns almost their entire team from last year. Now, frankly, I’ve been pretty unimpressed with Jim Engles’ tenure in the Ivy. Their peak W-L is 5-9; among the 13 coaches in school history who got at least four seasons to take a stab at making the project work, Engles has the worst win percentage with relative ease. The Ivy’s far from an easy place to win, but when your W-L% is the worst the school has seen over a 5+ year run in 30 years, a change might be necessary.
If he wants to keep his job, Columbia needs to make the Ivy League Tournament. Or, well, that’s how it should be. This is the oldest team in the league, with headlining star Geronimo Rubio De La Rosa electing to play his senior year for the oldest, most experienced team in the league rather than seeking stardom elsewhere. It finally feels like a reasonably talented group. 5-9 can’t and shouldn’t be enough here; win some games.
Tier 4…well. These are very different situations. On one hand, you have a program that dominated for a serious stretch of time before becoming completely irrelevant post-pandemic. On the other, a program that has never been relevant and once received major headline news because they finished .500.
It is time for Harvard to part ways with Tommy Amaker. Amaker’s been with the Crimson for 17 years and has not made an NCAA Tournament since 2015. They might have made it in 2020. The last three seasons have been three straight 5-9s, which are all the worst season Harvard’s had since 2008, Amaker’s first year on the job. There is a top-100 recruit on this roster, multiple former P5 offer guys, and the second-biggest budget among Ivy League basketball programs. Amaker’s systems, on both ends, have been horrifically stale for years now. Last year’s team was interesting because of Malik Mack, who got out at his first opportunity. I don’t look forward to another year of this, though Louis Lesmond is a good role player.
Honest to God, Dartmouth’s goal is to just not get embarrassed. Three starters are back this year, but from a team that won six games and had far and away the worst offense in the Ivy. There’s not much to point at here in the way of positive impact players, so I guess I’ll stand up for David McLaughlin as a coach. The last time this program even came somewhat close to sniffing the Tournament was 1999, which was a lot of presidents ago. A 62-131 record as HC looks rough, but Dartmouth has three 10+ win seasons in the last five attempts. From 2000 through 2018, they had five, or one every four years or so. He’s not bad. He’s just in a truly impossible position.
FOUR PREDICTIONS:
At least one of the two Princeton/Yale games (January 31 at Princeton, February 15 at Yale) goes to overtime.
Brown beats Vermont on December 3 in a mild upset.
Xaivian Lee gets legitimate NBA buzz, leaves, and is drafted in the second round.
There are three new coaches in this league next season.