January 24, 2010

Next to the word modesty in the dictionary, there might as well be a picture of Cornell Head Coach, Steve Donahue.  Ask him about a gutsy win and he'll simply tell you it was a "great college basketball game."  Give him the opportunity to make a case for his team to get an at large bid and he'll talk to you about the strength of the conference and the respect the other teams in the league deserve.  So when Coach Donahue says of his team, "I don't necessarily think there are any real shining weaknesses with us," it might be out of character, but you know that it means something.

After opening league play with 2 dominating wins over Columbia by a combined 47 points, it's tough to argue with him.  Columbia Head Coach Joe Jones certainly wouldn't.

"They really don't care who scores.  I mean they try to get Wittman shots, but they don't care, they just try to hit the open guy and they play great team basketball.  They're very sound in all aspects of the game," Jones said after the second game of the home and home series.

Columbia Senior guard, Niko Scott echoed his coach with a similar sentiment.  "They just complement each other really well.  I feel like they're all...they're just a great team," Scott said. "You can just tell."

Cornell does have most of the hallmarks of a great college basketball team.

Senior leadership: check.  Six of the top seven guys in minutes played for the Big Red are in their final year of eligibility and as Donahue will tell anyone that will listen, several of the guys on his squad have played "100 college basketball games together."

Inside-outside combination: check.  The Red start a pair of guys who can run the point and distribute the basketball.  Louis Dale won Ivy League player of the year as a sophomore and leads the Ivy League with 4.9 assists per game this year.  His counterpart, Chris Wroblewski, is the fourth best assist man in the league.  Both are also among the top 5 in assist to turnover ratio.  On the low block, Jeff Foote is the top rebounder in the Ivies with just shy of 9 per game.  Jones called Foote, after an underwhelming performance on Saturday, "the best center in the league."

Go to scorer: check.  Already the top scorer and 3 point shooter in Cornell history, Ryan Wittman is garnering national attention as one of the top shooters at the college level and is climbing up the all-time Ivy League scoring chart as well.  He is on pace to finish his career as one of the top 5 scorers ever to play in the Ancient Eight.

Depth: Check.  More importantly as Jones put it, "quality depth."  When healthy, Cornell can go eleven deep without much drop.  Off the bench the Red feature a forward in Mark Coury who started 29 games at Kentucky before transferring, another forward in Alex Tyler who was a 2 year starter for the Red before being plagued with injuries to open the season, and a guard in Geoff Reeves who limited one of the top scorers in the league to a 2 for 12 shooting performance in his most recent outing. All three are seniors (although Mark Coury, the Kentucky transfer still has one more year of eligibility).

Tyler's injuries, which have forced him to miss 8 games and counting, have helped the Red to become an even deeper team.  Previously buried at the end of the bench, senior tri-captain Jon Jaques took over the starting power forward spot and posted a team high 20 points against St. John's in just his fourth career start.  Although Jaques' scoring has tapered off slightly, his defense and rebounding has provided a spark as of late.  If Tyler does return to the starting lineup, the Red will have in Jaques another reliable, versatile 4-man off the bench.

Top notch defense: half-check.  Statistically, the Big Red defense does not match their offensive firepower.  They don't rank in the top 100 of any defensive category and they have allowed teams to shoot a hot 37% from three point land.

The results are improving though.  In the four games since a close loss to Kansas, the Red have limited their opponents to below 30% shooting from beyond the arc.  Over the last two weekends, Cornell has held Columbia, the top 3 point shooting team in the nation coming in, to a combined 24% from three point range.  In doing so, they hounded the best 3 point shooter in the country, Columbia's Noruwa Agho, into back to back games without a bucket from distance.

After allowing opponents to shoot better than 40% from the field in 9 of their first 12 contests this season, the Red have kept foes at or below that mark in each of their last 7 games.  And with the start of league play, Cornell added a new wrinkle, a 1-2-2 press.  Even after Columbia had seen it once, the Lions turned the ball over 18 times and assisted on just 8 buckets against the Cornell defense that used the new look for much of the game.

"They throw some pressure at you and they switch up defenses a lot which kind of takes you out of your offensive rhythm," Columbia Guard Patrick Foley said.

With the improving defense, Jones has been also impressed, calling this Cornell squad the best he's seen in the Ivy League in his seven years at the helm for Columbia.

Jones' analysis isn't unique.  The national media seems to agree.  In Jones' tenure, an Ancient Eight squad hasn't received an NCAA tournament seed higher than 11.  Syracuse Head Coach Jim Boeheim said in a conversation Pete Thamel of the New York Times that he would place Cornell somewhere between a 4 and a 6 right now.  Most experts have the Red pegged somewhere between 9 and 11.

When asked about the NCAA tournament and Cornell's chances of an at large bid if they fail to win the Ivy League Championship, Donahue declined to comment, saying that he didn't know enough about teams that the Red didn't face to give an educated answer.  In general, Donahue chooses to avoid the commentary and prognosticating.

"It's for family, friends, fans, alumni.  It’s fun.  It’s great.  But it's not about us," Donahue said.  "We play for each other."

According to Jones, that's the attitude that makes the difference.  "The thing that sets them apart," he said, "is that they're well coached and they're so unselfish."

Maybe with the pieces falling in place for the Red, Coach Donahue's assessment was modest after all.