Last week saw Ivy teams recover somewhat, going 6-5. However, two of the wins were over non-Division I opponents and two of the losses were against weak opponents at home. Even though the league schedule technically got underway this past weekend, we’ll call this The Final Power Rankings Before Ivy Play.
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| 1. | Penn (6-4) | 1 | The Quakers more than took care of business in Charleston, blasting a bad Citadel team 84-49. The really bad news for the rest of the league is that Eric Osmundson has regained his touch from the outside, hitting 7 of his last 12 three-point attempts. |
| 2. | Harvard (9-5, 1-0 Ivy) | 3 | Harvard got off to a solid start in Ivy play with an easy home win over Dartmouth. If Jim Goffredo continues to play like has with Brian Cusworth in the lineup (18.0 points per game, 43.8 percent from three-point range), the Crimson could give Penn a battle. |
| 3. | Yale (7-7) | 2 | Rice is way down this year, but winning there was still a decent road victory for the Bulldogs. Yale looked very good for the first 17:00 at Kansas until the Jayhawks upped the defensive intensity and James Jones’s crew absolutely crumbled. |
| 4. | Cornell (5-8) | 5 | Neither team played any defense, but Cornell was able to hit enough of its shots to keep it respectable in the loss at Washington. That, combined with the second-half blowout of Keuka College, was enough to propel the Big Red into the top half of the poll. |
| 5. | Columbia (7-6) | 4 | A disappointing loss at home to Lehigh was made even worse by a scary knee injury to Ben Nwachukwu. The Lions didn’t need the sophomore in Saturday’s blowout of CCNY, but Columbia’s chances this weekend may hinge on Nwachukwu’s availability. |
| 6. | Brown (4-9) | 6 | Tuesday’s home loss to Canisius dropped Brown to 0-5 at the Pizzitola Center on the season. But with Scott Friske leading the Bears to a win at Quinnipiac, this team would be 6-7 despite the injury to Luke Ruscoe if it hadn’t blown the UMES and Navy games. |
| 7. | Dartmouth (2-10, 0-1 Ivy) | 7 | The Big Green got its second win of the season at Army, but never really competed in its Ivy opener at Harvard. Dartmouth must win the rematch with Harvard and one of its two remaining non-league games to equal last year’s 4-11 mark entering full Ivy play. |
| 8. | Princeton (2-10) | 8 | The Tigers lost their sixth in a row with a lackluster performance in a 52-41 defeat at Rice. Princeton ranks among the worst in the nation offensively, while the slow pace of play has masked how bad this team is at the defensive end as well. |
