­The reigning Ivy League Player of the Year continues to amass the preseason hardware.

On Friday, senior wing Wesley Saunders was named among the top 50 players in the nation by ESPN’s new #CBBrank. The article polled 35 ESPN experts from across various platforms to get a one through 10 ranking of the top players in college basketball. Players are ranked according to their mean score.

Saunders clocked in at No. 46 with a mean score of 6.88, fractions of a point ahead of Kaleb “Zeus” Tarczewski, the Arizona center who demolished the Crimson front line two years ago in the teams’ third-round NCAA Tournament matchup.

“He’s our best player,” senior center Kenyatta Smith said Wednesday. “He has to be someone that comes with his energy every night and is ready to put the team on his back when need be.”

Saunders led the team in scoring last year with 14.2 points a game, adding 4.6 rebounds and 3.8 assists a contest while routinely guarding the opposing team’s best player.

The article described Saunders as “one of those guys who always looks sleepy at tipoff” but that “once he gets going … Saunders can hurt you anywhere inside the arc.”

“He’s our best player, but he’s an under control guy,” Harvard coach Tommy Amaker said. “He needs to be our hardest worker, [and] we have given him that role. When he does that, he’s different, and we’re different.”

Amaker went on to note that depending on how things shake out, Saunders is in the conversation to be one of the better players to ever play at Harvard.

—Staff writer David Freed can be reached at david.freed@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @CrimsonDPFreed.