December 30, 2009

There is no such thing as a "bad win."  A road win over a top 100 RPI team without your starting point guard (Louis Dale) or power forward (Alex Tyler) is certainly not a "bad win."  But Cornell's win on Tuesday night was no doubt an ugly win.

Jeff Foote's two-rebound, foul-plagued performance was surely not pretty.  And a week after looking almost invincible, Jon Jaques was closer to invisible on the offensive end.

While the two standout performers from Cornell's Holiday Festival championship struggled, Ryan Wittman was back to his usual antics.  The senior forward broke the all-time Cornell career scoring record, pushing his points total to 1,667, and also set a personal best with 34 on the night.

In the second half, Wittman scored more than half of the Red's points, several of which came on "no, no, no...yes!" shots.  Once they went down though you had to remind yourself that a contested, twisting, off-balance shot, early in the possession is in fact more of a "yes, yes, yes" shot when leaving the hands of Ryan Wittman.

Even with Wittman doing much of the scoring, the Big Red got contributions from unexpected places as well.  Chris Wroblewski filled in nicely for Dale as the on-ball guard with 6 assists, more than double his season average.  Adam Wire came off the bench to lead Cornell with 9 rebounds.  Mark Coury pitched in with 5 points and 3 boards, all coming in the first half.  And after the Kentucky transfer picked up 3 fouls of his own, Freshman Josh Figini logged the first game action and points of his young career with a pair of free throws.

"I give a lot of credit to those minutes that we got," Head Coach Steve Donahue said of Figini's performance along with fellow reserves Andre Wilikins and Max Groebe. "They kept our lead and then some at the end of the first half, which I thought was huge."

Following an ineffective first half spent mostly on the pine, Foote played 19 second half minutes, picking up just one foul and shooting an assertive 4-7 from the field.

On paper the game looked solid for Cornell.  And in college basketball a win is a win, especially when it is your third win over an Atlantic 10 opponent on the year.  Still, something was out of sync for the Big Red.

Even in the first half, as Cornell built an 11 point lead, the offense didn't find its natural flow.  In the second period, the La Salle on-ball pressure caused costly turnovers in the open court.  Although Cornell only coughed the ball up 13 times, the Explorers were able to convert those into 21 points.

Cornell Head Coach, Steve Donahue says it after most games: Cornell needs to get better each day.  On Tuesday, the Big Red did not look like they had gotten any better, but rather, had taken a step back.  Still, for the fifth time in their last six games they were able to hold off a second half comeback bid to seal the victory.  This time it came without Louis Dale, against arguably the top mid-major squad they'll play all year.  That in itself is a step forward.

Last year, with Dale injured the Red would often play solid first halves against tough opponents, but crumble against defensive pressure in the second period (see St. John's, Siena, Indiana and Syracuse).  On Tuesday night, Cornell started to falter but was able to hold on.

"What I do like is that we're figuring out ways to win games when not a lot is going right," Donahue said.  "We lose two guys tonight.  We only go 12-for-18 on foul shots, which we usually ice pretty well, and a team carved us up pretty good for stretches in the second half, yet we still figure out a way to win on the road."

Down the stretch with Cornell clinging to a 5 point lead, Chris Wroblewski, who had hit better than 93% of his free throws on the year, missed the front end of a 1-and-1.  Wittman cleaned up the mess though, knocking down all six of his free throws in the final 20 seconds to ice the game, the third of which pushed him past John Bajusz in the record books as the top scorer in Cornell Basketball history.

"We've been in a lot of close games and I think that's made us a better basketball team," Donahue said. "It's just fun to coach a group of guys that don't care how it gets done and play the right way.  Every single guy that comes in basically does what we ask and then some."