Explosive First Quarter by Cornell Hands Lions Sixth Ivy League Loss

In the Columbia football team’s 34-14 loss to Cornell on Saturday, the Big Red returned a kickoff and a punt for a touchdown and blocked a field goal—all of this happened just in the first quarter.

Columbia head coach Norries Wilson elected to defer to the second half after winning the toss, and Cornell’s Shane Kilcoyne returned the opening kickoff 94 yards for a score, giving Cornell a 7-0 lead 16 seconds into the first quarter.

“They did a good job game planning what they wanted to do on special teams,” Wilson said. “They did a great job with blocking, but there were some mistakes that we made on both of those opportunities that they had.”

The Big Red ran the ball more than in previous weeks, something Cornell head coach Jim Knowles had wanted to do with sophomore Stephen Liuzza at quarterback because of the running threat Liuzza poses. Although sophomore running back Randy Barbour finished the day with only 50 yards, Liuzza ran for 99 yards and two touchdowns and was 17-26 for 163 yards through the air.

“We’re always looking for balance and particularly with Steven as quarterback,” Knowles said. “We want to make sure we give him the opportunities and give our other runners an opportunity.”

The Lions offense sputtered in the first half as Cornell blitzed more than they had all season. Hormann was under pressure often, and finished the day only 16-of-34.

“Throughout the game I didn’t do a very good job recognizing when they were blitzing,” Hormann said. “We worked all week on checking out certain plays if we recognized a blitz and putting ourselves in a better situation, and I struggled with that today.”

On their only scoring drive of the half, an 18-yard run by sophomore Ray Rangel—his longest carry of the day—brought Columbia down to the Cornell 13-yard line. From the 13, Hormann’s pass into the end zone intended for Austin Knowlin on third down drew a pass interference call that kept the drive alive.

Knowlin hauled in the first of his two touchdown catches three plays later to put the Lions on the board. Knowlin finished the day with nine receptions for 73 yards, and was the victim of two pass interferences by the aggressive Cornell secondary.

“There’s a couple cheap shots here and there,” Knowlin said. “But they were a pretty physical bunch back there.”

With less than three minutes in the first quarter—and the Big Red up 34-7—Wilson took Hormann out of the game and put in sophomore transfer Shane Kelly at quarterback for the rest of the contest.

“I didn’t think that Craig was doing a great job with managing the game or checking out blitzes or seeing the blitzes,” Wilson said. “I thought that we needed a change, put someone else out there and maybe we could make some plays.”

Kelly provided a boost for the offense, getting three first downs on his first drive and connecting on his first six passes. Kelly finished the day 14-of-23 for 171 yards. He had danced out of pressure to connect downfield several times, but was sacked twice and stripped of the ball once.

“He missed some throws,” Wilson said. “He did get open a couple times and make some good decisions with the ball. It would be unfair to him and unfair to me for me to assess his performance without having evaluated it on the film.”

On the final drive of the game, the Lions marched down the field 87 yards in eight plays, Kelly connecting on an eight-yard pass to Knowlin with four seconds left on the clock.

“It was a good job to go down and finish the game and to stay competitive, but when you’re down 34-7 and you go down and make it 34-14, that’s just something for the stats,” Wilson said. “You got to do that when it’s 7-0, show it to me when it’s 7-0, not when we’re down by 31.”