Ivy League Preview: 2026-27 College Basketball Predictions & Best Bets Recap
Ryan McIntyre (@Moneyline_Mac) and Michael Huffer (@michael_huffer3) break down the 2026-27 Ivy League college basketball preview, with Princeton primed for a bounce back and Yale due for a step down. It ends with Michael Huffer riding Harvard to the dance and Ryan McIntyre backing Fran McCaffrey’s Penn to win the league again.
Penn Crashed The Party Last March
Fran McCaffrey went home to Penn and won right away. Ryan McIntyre calls it one of the more underrated stories in college basketball last season. The Quakers went 9-5 in league play. Then they knocked off a heavily favored Yale team in the title game and punched their ticket to the dance. Harvard also showed real life under Tommy Amaker, and Cornell made the Ivy tournament again at 8-6. Princeton was the flop at 5-9, and McIntyre admits he lost a lot of money on them. Brown sat in the basement at 3-11. Michael Huffer of the Pump Fake pod flagged Columbia as the other surprise. The Lions always seem to start hot, but then a bad losing stretch hits in January or February.
The bench is where this league earns its reputation. James Jones is in his 28th year at Yale. He shared Coach of the Year with Amaker, who is somehow 20 years into the Harvard job. Mitch Henderson, now in year 16, has taken Princeton to a Sweet 16. John Jaquez enters year three back at his alma mater Cornell, where he played on a Sweet 16 team. Kevin Hovde, a Todd Golden staff guy, gets his second year at Columbia. Then come the new faces. Brett McConnell takes over at Dartmouth. Eric Reveno also replaces longtime coach Mike Martin at Brown after stops at Stanford, Oregon State, Georgia Tech and Portland. Huffer called the coaching stellar, so don’t expect many teams to beat themselves.
Stock Up Princeton, Stock Down Yale
Huffer’s stock-up pick is Princeton, and it is the right call. The Tigers bring back five starters from a team that lost close game after close game. McIntyre went through the nonconference damage: Temple by four, Vermont by five, St. Joe’s by two, Monmouth by five, Loyola by five, Merrimack by three. Then Temple got them again by four. That adds up to 13 single-digit losses last year, and young teams learn from exactly that kind of pain. Henderson had won the league three straight years before the dip, with a Sweet 16 run in there. So last season looks like the outlier. Losing together either breaks a group or hardens it, and Huffer is betting this one came out harder.
Yale is the stock-down team, and both guys landed on it before the other could say it out loud. That feels harsh on James Jones. Outside the COVID year, he has finished in the top four every season except his first in 2000. He also won the league back to back and three of the last four. On top of that, Yale made the NCAA Tournament in three of the last five years. But the roster turnover is heavy this time. Yale goes back to being the hunter instead of the hunted. So stock down here means no league title, and Huffer put it plainly: even a third-place finish counts as a major drop for this program.
The Ivy League College Basketball Preview, One Through Eight
The top of the board comes down to two teams, and the guys split on the order. Huffer has Harvard winning the regular season because Amaker’s roster was a win away last year. He admits he never roots for Ivy teams but will make an exception for Amaker. McIntyre goes Penn first and Harvard second. McCaffrey brings back about 77% of his production, so the players already know exactly what he wants. Penn also added Sir Muhammad from Notre Dame. Huffer likes how those portal pieces fit next to the returning core. So it is Penn and Harvard in some order, with a clear gap before anyone else enters the picture.
Princeton is third on both cards, and Huffer sees a tight fight from three to five. Neither host will put Yale outside the top four, because it is too hard to bet against Jones. Then the cards split. Huffer has Cornell fifth because the Big Red can score 100 on anybody. He just thinks the offense is too volatile to win ten league games. McIntyre flips it and slots Columbia fifth in Hovde’s second year. He has Cornell sixth as a younger team. Huffer’s Columbia angle is simple: bet them in November and December, then back off. Brown and Dartmouth round it out at seven and eight. Brown returns everybody, but McIntyre needs to see it from Reveno first.
Harvard Over Yale In The Final
Only four teams make the Ivy tournament, and both guys have the same four. That sets up Harvard against Yale and Penn against Princeton in the semis. Huffer chalks it up with Harvard over Princeton in the title game. He also says this is the highest he has been on Harvard since he started podcasting. McIntyre likes Yale to get revenge on Penn, because the youngest team in the league should be playing its best by the end of the year. Then he has Harvard beating Princeton and taking down Yale in the final. A Harvard-Yale title game is the rivalry matchup everyone wants. It would also send Amaker back to the dance for the first time since 2015.
The awards follow the picks. Huffer takes Robert Hinton for Player of the Year. He also expects Harvard to land two guys on the first-team all-conference list. McIntyre goes with TJ Power, the Penn senior by way of UVA and Duke, now in year two with McCaffrey. Coach of the Year splits the same way. Huffer sweeps it with Amaker, partly because nobody knows how many seasons the veteran coach has left. McIntyre rides the resurgence instead. In his words, it is McCaffrey’s world and we are just living in it. So his ticket says Penn keeps the momentum going and gets it done again.
Midnight Tipoffs At Rock Hill
The chat got its shoutouts, and Huffer laid out his March Madness plan. With a kid on the way, the full week he wanted is off the table. But he still hopes to catch the Thursday and Friday of the first round, which is all you really need anyway. Then the talk turned to opening night. McIntyre is headed to Rock Hill, where High Point and Liberty tip at midnight. Grambling and Northern Illinois follow at 3 AM. Merrimack and App State go at 6, and Queens and Winthrop at 9. Sioux Falls also gets in on it, with Memphis and Iowa State as the late headliner. Huffer respects whoever signed up for the 3 AM slot, and so do we.
Podcast Chapters
00:00 Download the SGPN App Today!
01:05 Ivy League Private School Edition
02:57 Last Year In The Ivy And Coaching
07:35 Stock Up Princeton, Stock Down Yale
12:38 Harvard, Penn & Princeton Top The Ivy
18:03 Harvard Over Yale In The Final
21:17 Player And Coach Of The Year
22:52 Chat And March Madness
25:47 Midnight Games At Rock Hill
28:17 Sign-Off & Socials
