Men's Basketball Predicted as Top-Ten Mid-Major

With nearly six months to go until the season starts, the pundits have already begun to line up behind the Harvard men’s basketball team. John Gasaway, who picked Harvard to make the Final Four two years ago, has christened the Crimson the seventh-best mid-major in the country heading into the 2016-2017 season. Harvard ranks right below VCU and Wichita State, two programs who won a combined three games in the NCAA Tournament last year.

Gasaway defended his selection by highlighting the Crimson’s historic recruiting class—Harvard signed four top-100 recruits for the first time in its history—and the return of three-year starter Siyani Chambers ’16-’17, who withdrew from college the 2015-2016 school year due to an ACL injury suffered in the offseason. Chambers rehabbed the entire year while staying in the area and, since the school year is over, can begin practicing with the team immediately, per league rules.

“When you sign a recruiting class ranked No. 10 in the nation, and you do so at an Ivy League program, people will salute you,” Gasaway wrote. “Well, I’m saluting… Harvard recorded its worst results since 2007-08 last season, but this program is poised to rebound in dramatic and rather sudden fashion.”

Before finishing 14-16 a year ago, the Crimson had won at least a share of five consecutive Ivy League titles, including four consecutive trips to the NCAA Tournament. In 2015-2016, Harvard stumbled out of the blocks in Ivy League play, losing five of its first six games, before rebounding with four wins in five contests to close the year at 7-7, good for fourth place in the Ancient Eight.

During this stretch, the Crimson secured its best victory of the season—a 73-71 home win against Princeton that was the nail in the coffin for the Tigers’ title hopes.

The next time they play, both teams’ title hopes may be on the line, however. Gasaway ranked Princeton just two spots behind Harvard and noted, “don’t hand that 2016-17 Ivy title to Harvard just yet.” Princeton brings back every single contributor from last year’s squad, which finished 12-2 and was a couple buckets away from winning the league outright, and gets senior forward Hans Brase—who missed the season for similar reasons to Chambers—back on campus.

Besides Harvard and Princeton, Penn—who improved significantly in coach Steve Donahue’s first season with a freshman-heavy roster—and Yale, the two-time defending league champion, loom as the other main contenders for the Ivy throne.

—Staff writer David Freed can be reached at david.freed@thecrimson.com.