Big Red Shoots for Perfection in Ivy League Campaign

Where the New England Patriots failed, the Cornell men’s basketball team hopes to succeed in its bid for an undefeated season. Currently 8-0 in the Ivy League (16-5 overall), Cornell would be the first team to go 14-0 in the Ivies since Penn accomplished that feat during the 2002-2003 campaign.

The Big Red has won 10 straight dating back to a Jan. 10 home victory against Alvernia, and has been unstoppable since. The Ivy team that has come closest to dethroning Cornell is Harvard, who eventually fell 72-71 in Cambridge, Mass. The Lions came close as well in a 70-64 loss to open the Ivy season in Ithaca, N.Y.

The core of Cornell’s consistent winning production has come from the play of forward Ryan Wittman and point guard Louis Dale. Wittman is averaging 16 points per game on 49 percent shooting from the floor, including a stellar 49 percent from downtown. Dale has added 13.3 points per game on 44 percent shooting, as well as 4.7 assists and 1.3 steals per game.

But Wittman and Dale were also producing at a high level as freshmen last year. Additionally, Cornell lost graduate Graham Dow’s 1.6 steals and 3.9 assists per game.

Other than Dow and the replacement of graduate Andrew Naeve’s big-man production with that of sophomore transfer Jeff “Seven” Foote, the roster remains unchanged. So why is the Big Red on pace for a 14-0 Ivy record, rather than last year’s 9-5?

The cynic might cite the many graduates from last year’s Penn Ivy Championship roster. However, the reemergence of junior Adam Gore, who missed all but one game last season with a torn ACL, has been an important cog in the Big Red success story.

Gore gives Cornell a third scoring option from the outside (38 percent from downtown, second on the team behind Wittman) which it lacked last year, and takes some of the pressure off Wittman and Dale on both ends of the floor (9.0 points per game, 1.2 steals per game).

“Adam’s done a terrific job coming back,” said Big Red head coach Steve Donahue. “He was probably a little rusty early on, but I think he’s feeling very comfortable out there now. He’s obviously a big part of what we do.”

Although the trio of Wittman, Dale, and Gore are leading Cornell in many statistical categories, it would be wise not to overlook the contributions of the big men that tend to evade the box score.

“Our inside guys, [senior] Jason Hartford, [sophomore] Alex Tyler, and Foote have really done a terrific job. [Junior] Brian Kreefer, when he’s played, he’s done a great job,” Donahue said of his power forwards and center. “Those four guys do as well as anybody in our league.”

Kreefer offered another explanation for this year’s improved chemistry.

“We had a trip to France this past summer and put a lot of work in last spring, which helped us get used to playing with each other,” Kreefer said. “We had a fairly young team last year, and we knew that if we worked hard in the off-season, we could make some noise in the Ivy League.”

In the trip to Europe to which Kreefer is referring, Cornell played against the under-19 French national team, two professional French teams, and the Luxembourg national team.

“We played games with a 24-second shot clock, which kind of started the faster-paced play that we use now,” he said.
Donahue agreed with Kreefer’s assessment of the trip.

“I think it was a huge piece of [the improvement],” Donahue said. “I thought we stayed focused in the spring, and that’s something that goes underrated in those trips.

Usually in the spring the guys have a tendency to relax since the season’s over, but I thought we worked extremely hard because we had the trip overseas coming up. I think the guys really got a chance to bond together and to really understand what the goals were for the year ahead.”

Maybe the Pats will give that a try this summer.