Cornell in Top 25

They've been knocking on the door for a while, but the Cornell men's basketball team finally cracked the Top 25, garnering just one more vote than Ole Miss in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches' Poll. It's the first time in 59 years that the Big Red have been among the top 25 teams in the nation, dating back to Jan. 3, 1951.

That also makes them the first ranked Ivy team to crack the top 25 since Princeton did it at the end of the 1997-98 season. That squad finished No. 8 in the year-end AP poll and No. 16 in the final USA Today poll.

The Big Red are fresh off two dominating performances to open Ivy play. They trumped Dartmouth by 34 and then topped that by taking down Harvard (seemingly their closest rival in-conference) by a whopping 36 points.

In my opinion, this news all but seals the fact that Cornell as a contender is here to stay. They may be losing three superstars at the end of the year, but a Top 25 ranking (even in February) is a tough recruiting tool to combat. And that's before we even factor what this national attention could do to their ranking in the NCAA Tournament. It looks like Penn's resurgence in the Ivies won't be as easy as waiting for Cornell's "Big Three" to graduate.