Sunday, September 24, 2017

Ivy League: Princeton Builds on 23-7 Season to try to hold off Harvard and Yale for Title

The only Division 1 League that does not give scholarships and only plays games on Friday and Saturday night to make sure there students are studying boasts three top 100 basketball teams (out of 351), putting their basketball programs well ahead of Ivy League football.

Value Add projects Harvard and Yale nudging ahead of a very strong defending champion and 12-seed in Princeton, but the three are all well ahead of the rest of the League. Princeton's duo of Devin Cannady and Myles Stephens are the two most valuable returning players in the league, according to Value Add.

Here is where Value Add ranks each Ivy League team for the season, and the Massey Rankings rank the football teams against all other schools (including behind the 129 FBS schools).  Princeton's passing game gives them the top football squad so far. Updates will be provided here.


Ivy / 2017 seedHoops 2017-18Football
Harvard87210
Yale91193
Princeton 1296152
Cornell150253
Penn177175
Dartmouth180203
Columbia224229
Brown321235

Here are the top 15 projected players in the conference in order.

Top 15 Ivy League PlayersValue AddSchoolHt
Devin Cannady 36.27Princeton`6-01
Myles Stephens 125.40Princeton`6-05
Matthew Morgan5.20Cornell`6-03
Chris Lewis 04.75Harvard`6-09
AJ Brodeur 254.71Pennsylvania`6-08
Makai Mason 114.70Yale`6-01
Matt Morgan 104.50Cornell`6-02
Bryce Aiken 114.30Harvard`6-00
Seth Towns 314.10Harvard`6-07
Miye Oni 244.05Yale`6-06
Mike Smith 123.70Columbia`5-11
Justin Bassey 203.61Harvard`6-05
Evan Boudreaux 123.50Dartmouth`6-08
Alex Copeland 33.46Yale`6-03

Ken Pomeroy ranked the Ivy League the 18th best of 32 Division 1 basketball conferences, which will all be previewed here with notes on which schools are now "basketball" or "football" schools based on which program is stronger this season. Football revenue is much higher, but programs are much more expensive between equipment and the requirement of matching enough women's scholarships in other sports. Therefore some programs forgo FBS football programs to focus on low cost basketball programs as their biggest revenue sport.

Sports IllustratedFox Sports and ESPN have lauded Value Add Basketball for estimating the number of points each college basketball players is worth to his team above a replacement player - similar to baseball WAR (Wins Above Replacement). Massey Ratings is used for the football rankings above.

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