The Columbia men’s basketball team will enter the 2007-2008 season ranked fourth in the Ivy League, according to the Ivy League men’s basketball preseason media poll.

The Lions finished with 80 points in the voting, which was conducted by the various league beat writers. They are currently ranked behind Cornell, Yale, and Penn.

The Big Red topped the poll with 119 points and 10 first-place votes, one year after finishing third in the league. This marks the first time that neither Penn nor Princeton has been ranked first overall in the preseason poll since the 1988-1989 season, when Dartmouth was named the preseason favorite.

Yale and Penn were a close second and third, respectively, with the Bulldogs pulling down 104 points and three first place votes and the defending champion Quakers gaining 97 points and one first-place vote. The two remaining first-place votes went to Columbia and Brown. The Bears were ranked fifth, 10 points behind the Light Blue.
Rounding out the bottom half of the league poll are Harvard, Princeton, and Dartmouth, who finished with 43, 40, and 23 points, respectively. Those three teams finished with a combined 13 wins in Ivy League play last season.

Columbia will open its season on Nov. 9 against Fordham. Ivy play begins on Jan. 19 against Cornell.