This season, the odds say Penn men’s basketball is destined to win it all.
Coming off an Ivy Madness championship and the team’s first March Madness appearance in seven years, men’s basketball is ranked first in the Ivy League Preseason Poll for the upcoming 2026-27 basketball season. The Quakers jumped six spots in the poll after placing seventh for the 2025-26 season preseason rankings.
With the returning leadership of star player and senior forward TJ Power, who averaged 16.4 points and 7.6 rebounds per game last season, the Quakers will be the team to beat in the Ivy League this season. Power is a pillar of the team, not only with his scoring, but due to his clutch-time ability. In the championship game against Yale, the senior scored 44 points on 53% shooting, which allowed Penn to win in overtime against a team that was the favorite from the start of the season.
While Penn is backed by an outstanding performance last season, Harvard and Yale are no names to be completely wiped off the table.
Harvard’s first-place votes come from the return of its star shooting guard Robert Hinton, who averaged 16.8 points and 4.8 rebounds per game. Harvard has a strong duo, with their second returning star player, forward Thomas Batties II. Thomas averaged 12.3 points per game, providing offensive power for the Crimson.
Yale earned only two first-place votes, a fall from greatness for the Bulldogs. Yale lost their key power forward, Nick Townsend, who led the team in scoring and put up 17 points in last season’s Ivy League championship game. The Bulldogs did retain two excellent guards in Trevor Mullin and Riley Fox, allowing it to stay high in the rankings.
Penn surpassed the other Ivies’ first-place votes in strides, with 11 votes. Penn pushed Yale from its previous spot of unanimous preseason poll winner in 2025 after beating the Bulldogs in the Ivy Madness tournament last season. Harvard follows Penn with seven first-place votes, Yale received two, and Princeton one.
Even though Cornell played in Ivy Madness last year and held a better record than Princeton, the Big Red still did not receive any first-place votes and was 15 points behind Princeton’s total poll result of 97 points. Similarly, Brown, who had the worst in-conference record of the Ivies last season, is ranked above Dartmouth by 12 points.
This year’s Ivy Madness tournament is being hosted at the Palestra from March 12-14 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Cathedral of College Basketball.
