Men’s basketball has inked a recruiting class of four first-years, the program announced.

The recruiting class, composed of two guards and two forwards, is perhaps one of the best in the program’s recent history. Guards Avery Brown and Kenny Noland round out the team’s backcourt recruits, while forwards Blair Thompson and Zinou Bedri are the Light Blue’s newcomers in the frontcourt.

In a press release, head coach Jim Engles said he was looking forward to the impact each recruit will make at Columbia.

“I am very excited to announce the newest additions to our program,” he said. “These four young men will be great representatives of Columbia University both on and off the court. I’m proud of the work our staff has done on the recruiting front this past year, developing relationships with these young men and their families.”

Following two consecutive seasons in which the Lions won only a single Ivy League game, the group has a number of holes to fill in its young roster. Ike Nweke, CC ’22, the team’s leading scorer last year, leaves an opening in the frontcourt.

Brown, a 6-foot-4 guard from Northfield Mount Hermon High School, is a three-star prospect who garnered interest from programs across the country. The Connecticut native turned down offers from Indiana University, Arizona State University, and Kansas State University, among others, to attend Columbia. As a senior at Northfield Mount Hermon, he set a program record with 17 assists in a game and earned first-team All-New England Prep School Athletic Conference honors.

Thompson, who also graduated from Northfield Mount Hermon, is a 6-foot-7 forward and is also a three-star recruit. Thompson averaged 17.8 points, 5.7 rebounds, and 1.8 assists per game in his senior season, during which he also earned first-team National Prep Showcase All-Tournament honors. The forward, who is currently ranked as the No. 216 recruit in his class by 247Sports, turned down offers from Ivy League schools Harvard, Princeton, Penn, and Yale.

Northfield Mount Hermon head coach John Carroll, who coached both Brown and Thompson, told the New England Recruiting Report in April that he expects the duo to make an immediate impact at Columbia.

“Avery has all of the ability to not only change the future of Columbia basketball, but also Ivy League basketball,” Carroll said. “I can’t think of a more dynamic duo coming into Columbia than Avery and Blair Thompson.”

Noland is a 6-foot-3 guard from North Carolina who also made waves as a prep school star. As a soon to be graduate of the Hotchkiss School, he was awarded the NEPSAC Class A Player of the Year after he averaged 18.1 points, 7.3 rebounds, and 7.5 assists per game last year. The guard selected Columbia over offers from schools like Eastern Kentucky University and Dartmouth.

Bedri, a 6-foot-9 forward who is from Algeria, rounds out the class. In his school year at DME Academy in Daytona Beach, Florida, he averaged 18.2 points and 9 rebounds per game. Bedri scored 36 points and 22 rebounds in a single game last season, and is also a former teammate of current sophomore guard Geronimo Rubio De La Rosa, as the two played together at Spring Creek Academy in Texas in 2021.

Assistant coach Jesse Agel echoed Engles’ excitement for the new class of players.

“We’re very excited with the young men we have coming into the program and their potential,” Agel said. “It’s always hard to make that transition from high school to major college basketball; the good news is they all spent a year in prep school, which gives them another year of preparation, and we couldn’t be more excited with the ability these guys will possess and add to the culture of our program.”