PRINCETON, N.J. -- Defending Ivy League champion Princeton has been selected to repeat in the 2018-19 Women’s Basketball Preseason Poll.
After a vote by conference media and women’s basketball sports information directors, the Tigers tallied 14 first-place votes en route to 133 points. Penn and Harvard were neck-and-neck for second and third, respectively, with the Quakers earning two first-place votes and 107 points and the Crimson receiving one first-place vote and 104 points. Yale took fourth with 89 points, as the voters selected a repeat of last year’s top-four teams.
Brown, which participated in the 2017 Ivy Madness, placed fifth, and Dartmouth, which just missed a spot in 2018 Ivy Madness, finished sixth. Columbia and Cornell rounded out the poll.
The 2019 Ivy League Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments will be held on the campus of Yale University at the John J. Lee Amphitheater at Payne Whitney Gymnasium March 16-17. The League’s unique tournament format has enhanced the importance of the regular season as seven of the eight squads had an opportunity to earn a berth into the four-team tournament with two weeks remaining in the 2017-18 regular season.
The League posted four wins against Power Five opponents last year and finished as the ninth-best conference in the NCAA RPI. The Ivies face
another tough non-conference slate in 2018-19 with 13 contests against Power Five opponents.
Princeton took the top spot in the preseason poll for the eighth time since the poll began in 1999, the seventh time in the past nine years and the first time since 2015-16. The Tigers have claimed six League titles over the past nine years, including a run of four-straight from 2009-2013 and an undefeated season in 2014-15.
Princeton returns four players who started at least 10 games last season, including the reigning Player of the Year in junior
Bella Alarie. Penn, which has three Ivy championships in five years, will be led by last season’s Rookie of the Year
Eleah Parker, while Harvard brings back a pair of All-Ivy performers in juniors
Katie Benzan (first team) and
Jeannie Boehm (second team).
Yale junior
Roxy Barahman, who earned honorable mention a year ago, will be joined by the 34
th-best recruit and five-star ESPN recruit
Camilla Emsbo, whose twin sister
Kira is a freshman with Princeton. Brown returns two All-Ivy players in senior
Shayna Mehta (second team) and junior
Justine Gaziano (honorable mention).
The women's basketball roundtable, which features the eight Ivy League head coaches discussing a variety of topics, will be released on Thursday, Oct. 25 at 10 a.m., while the men's coaches roundtable will be posted on Tuesday, Oct. 23 at 10 a.m. Harvard claimed the top spot in the
2018-19 men's basketball preseason poll.
IVY LEAGUE WOMEN’S BASKETBALL PRESEASON POLL
(first-place votes in parentheses)
| 1. |
Princeton (14) |
133 |
| 2. |
Penn (2) |
107 |
| 3. |
Harvard (1) |
104 |
| 4. |
Yale |
89 |
| 5. |
Brown |
66 |
| 6. |
Dartmouth |
55 |
| 7. |
Columbia |
30 |
| 8. |
Cornell |
28 |