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Princeton University Athletics
Men's Basketball Chosen to Repeat as Ivy Champions in 2004-05 Media Poll
November 02, 2004 | Men's Basketball
Nov. 2, 2004
The Princeton men's basketball team, which returns four starters and 12 letterwinners from last season's team that finished 13-1 in league play and won the Ivy title by three games, has been chosen to repeat as league champions in the annual preseason media poll released Tuesday.
The Tigers, who finished 20-8 overall last season and reached the NCAA tournament for the 23rd time, received 14 of the 16 first-place votes in the poll to take the top spot with 125 points. Penn, which tied for second last season with Brown at 10-4 in league play, got one first-place vote and finished second in the poll with 111 points.
"It's nice to be recognized in the poll, but obviously it doesn't mean anything," says Princeton head coach Joe Scott. "Like everyone else, it's going to come down to our performance on the court this season."
Brown (83 points) finished behind Yale (85 points) in the preseason poll, but the Bears did get the other first-place vote. Columbia, Cornell, Harvard and Dartmouth rounded out the order of finish in the preseason poll. The poll consists of the votes of two media members from each school's area that cover those schools throughout the season.
Either Princeton or Penn, or both, has won the Ivy League championship in each of the last 16 seasons. Though Yale earned a shared championship with Princeton and Penn in 2002, the last team besides the Tigers or Quakers to win a solo Ivy title was Cornell in 1987-88.
Princeton won its final nine Ivy League games last season after falling to Penn at home for its only conference loss. The Tigers have won at least 10 Ivy League games 11 consecutive years and have at least a .500 record in conference games in every season since 1953-54, a streak of 51 consecutive seasons that is the longest such streak in NCAA Division I.
The Tigers begin their 2004-05 season Nov. 11, playing Bucknell at Syracuse's Carrier Dome in the first game of the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic.