The Ivy League pre-season media basketball polls were released over the weekend placing the women third and the men seventh in the Ivy League, but you wouldn't know that by asking either men's head basketball coach Dave Faucher or women's coach Chris Wielgus.
"I don't pay much attention to the polls, in fact I really don't know who was picked where. There are so many polls and none of them are usually right anyways," Faucher said.
Wielgus figures it's just something to amuse the media.
"I think the only reason they have the media vote is so there is something to do at the annual basketball pre-season luncheon," she said.
The men's squad was picked to finish seventh in the Ancient Eight, garnering 11 more votes than eight-place Brown. As usual Princeton and Pennsylvania were picked to finish in the top two spots. The Tigers captured nine of the first 16 place votes and 121 points while the Quakers finished two points behind Princeton, receiving 119 points and seven first-place votes.
Faucher found the order of the two perennial powers intriguing, since he thinks Penn may be stronger than Princeton this season.
"Looking at the poll, the only surprise or thing of interest was Princeton getting picked over Penn. The two teams are clearly at the top of the league, but Penn is going to be tough and Princeton graduated a lot of players. I thought Penn would probably be picked first."
Rounding out the men's poll, starting in third place, were Harvard (78), Columbia (69), Cornell (67) and Yale (61). Faucher believes people voted based on what players were returning and little else. That would be bad news for the Green, who return the league's leading scorer and rebounder from last season.
For the fourth consecutive season, the Big Green women were picked to finish third in the league. Dartmouth earned two-first place votes and 93 points, trailing Princeton and Harvard, who were selected for first and second place respectively.
"We always finish third," Wielgus said of a team that returns four starters from last season. "And come to think of it, I think Yale always finishes sixth. People have preconceptions about where everybody should be placed, but all that matters in the end is the final poll at the end of the year."
Penn finished fourth in the poll, followed by Brown, Yale, Columbia and Cornell. The parity of the women's group this season is evident by the fact that five teams received first place votes, while only two men's teams received first-place nods. In looking at the poll, Wielgus said she thought that Yale was better than a sixth-place team.
"I am shocked that Yale finished sixth," she said. "They have one of the best inside games in the league and probably the top three-point shooter. They are going to be a factor in this year's race and deserved to be higher than sixth. But it goes to show you how little the polls mean."
Last year, the Big Green men were picked to finish fifth in the pre-season poll and wound up in eighth place, while the women were picked to come in third and indeed finished third.
