JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Louis Dale remembers when he first walked around the Cornell campus, he couldn't believe what he'd walked into. Dale casually asked students if they attended basketball games.Say what?
Hockey was king. Lacrosse was a close second.
Stash the sticks. Hoops has quickly gained popularity over the past few years in Ithaca, N.Y., and the Big Red made history Friday. No. 12 Cornell kept the early NCAA tournament upsets in style, beating No. 5 Temple 78-65 here in the opening subregional game at Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena.
The Ivy League champion Big Red captured their first NCAA tourney game in history behind superb shooting from the outside and solid defense. It also represented the first win for the Ivy League since Princeton in 1998.
Dale (21 points) , a senior from Birmingham, Ala., and Ryan Wittman (20), son of former Indiana star and NBAer Randy Wittman, combined to score 41 points. The pair was 13 of 26 from the floor, firing away on more than half of Big Red's 48 attempted field goals, and combined on seven treys.
Cornell (28-4), which led by as many as 19 points, has won 16 of its last 17 and is 26-2 since Turkey Day.
"I think our mentality was we wanted to be the toughest team," Dale said. "We just wanted to -- we knew it was going to be a hard-fought game and that we just needed to stay poised and be tough."
Temple had hoped its defense would carry it. Statistically, the Owls had the best defense in the field in scoring (56.1) and defending the 3-point line (28.1 percent).
Cornell, meanwhile, leads the nation in 3-point shooting percentage at 43.4 and is also the field's best team in number of 3s made per game at 9.8.
Cornell didn't quite match its numbers against Temple but was close and certainly good enough -- 39.1 percent from beyond the arc with nine treys.
Of course, Cornell is making basketball fun back home, too.
Cornell, which has won 16 of 17 games since a 5-point road loss at Kansas on Jan. 6, became the first Ivy League team to win an NCAA tournament game since fifth-seeded Princeton took down No. 12 seed UNLV in 1998.
The Big Red's win total matches an Ivy League record for wins in a season with the 1970-71 Penn Quakers (28-1). It also gives Cornell a 4-1 record against Big Five schools and a 5-1 mark against schools in Philadelphia.
Temple's last advantage was 5-2 at the 18:33 mark in the first half. Wittman made three straight during an early stretch in the second half to extend Cornell's advantage to 51-42. Temple wouldn't get any closer than seven points the rest of the way.
KEY ELEMENT
Cornell was dazzling from the floor, shooting 56.3 percent -- 68.4 in the first half -- but the tone was set on the boards.
Seven-foot Cornell center Jeff Foote made life miserable inside and outside the paint for Temple. Foote who added 16 points, was an highly effective sceener, passer and rebounder for the Big Red. He helped the winners out-rebound Temple 30-20 and, at times playing atop Cornell's zone, disrupted the passing lanes with his long arms. That helped lead to 18 points off turnovers.
Temple didn't shoot that poorly (27 of 52 for 51.9 percent), but it simply couldn't compete inside.
GAME BALL GOES TO
Cornell head coach Steve Donahue. The pupil finally beat his mentor.
Not only was the win Cornell's first in the NCAA tourney in six games, it also marked Donahue's first over Temple head coach Fran Dunphy in 13 tries.
The two are dear friends, and it was Dunphy who gave Donahue his first coaching job at the Division I level at Penn 10 years ago.
"I obviously can't say enough about Fran Dunphy," Donahue said. "He beat me 12 straight times when he was the head coach at Penn. I've never beaten him until now and he's says the same thing after every game, and he's such a darned good coach. I am torn right now with that feeling in my stomach. I just respect the heck out of him."
HEART GOES OUT TO
Dunphy. He didn't want this game against his good buddy, Donahue, citing friendship and even implying the NCAA selection committee was intent on matching the pair.
There may have been another reason why Dunphy didn't want the game: Cornell is pretty darn good, too.
Dunphy-led teams have lost 11 straight NCAA games and are 1-12 overall.
WHERE TO MOVE HERE
Cornell moves into Sunday's second round against the winner of Friday's second game between Wisconsin and Wofford. Cornell has never played either school.
SOUNDBITE
"I thought they looked like a very fresh basketball team. They were really impressive to watch and whenever they needed a basket they got it." -- Temple coach Fran Dunphy.
Comments (Page 1 of 2)
I don't think it was that big of an upset. Quite a few people had cornell winning in our company brackets....
EVERYDAY WHEN I READ THE SPORTS NEWS ANOTHER HIGH SEED HAS BITTEN THE DUST.........
I LOVE MARCH MADNESS....On Any Given Day....as the saying goes.....
EVERYDAY WHEN I READ THE SPORTS NEWS ANOTHER HIGH SEED HAS BITTEN THE DUST.........
I LOVE MARCH MADNESS....On Any Given Day....as the saying goes.....
No surprise here. Cornell is a very good shooting team and they don't give the ball away. Wittman is some kind of shooter. Next opponent--watch out !!
Way to go IVY League! Keep it up!
Kids that play and graduate.
Same to the Butler Bulldogs!
Man, my brackett is in the toilet.
Whaat was the final score?
Go Jon Jaques!!!!!
Go Big Red!!!!!!
Now everyone knows why the A10 is such a weak conference. i am a xavier hater but to tell the truth they are the only team in the A10
As of this morning, on ESPN, only 56 out of a million or so bracket sheets were still correct..... I wonder what the numbers are this afternoon.....
yeah basketball is ghetto. hockey is much better. they allow people to assault someone else until they bleed! and baseball has a strategy that allows you to throw a deadly object at the other players head in an attempt to hurt them.
but basketball. ghetto!
you racist fool. racists never have any logic behind their hatred
Although Penn lost to Villianova in the Eastern Regional Final that year, its only loss was later erased because Villanova's star player, Howard Porter, had signed up with an agent while an undergraduate. As a result Villanova forfeited its tournament wins and Penn wound up 29-0, the only Division I team ever to go undefeated and not win the NCAA tournament. While Cornell is certainly an outstanding team teams now play more games so those 28 wins were accompanied by 4 losses, including one to Penn, which is the last Ivy team to have advanced to the Final Four (1979), losing to magic Johnson and Michigan State. BTW I'm Penn Class of 1972.
Way to go BIG RED......next victim......Wisconsin
this is one of my favorite times of the year. I'm from Philly, went to college at Arkansas, Minnesota & Utah St ober an 18 year period. I have lived all over the country and I ABSOLUTELY LOVE TO WATCH the little schools pull out the unbelieveable upsets that happen every year. I watched my GOLDEN GOPHERS go down early today & it looks like my AGGIES @ Utah St are going down also, Arkansas didn't make it this year but there is always next year. One of these days a little school will pull out all of the stops and win it all, almost like when Indiana St almost did it w/ Larry Bird against Mich.St. some years back. I am so impressed w/ the talent I see w/ these kids each and every year. I love college football, I met Billy Sims when he played at Okla, Bear Bryant w/Alabama, Joe ferguson when he QB'D for our team at Arkansas, knew the Tark, Eller, Paige & Ed White w/ the Vikes & worked q/ Steve Spurrier before he took over the Gators years ago. My favorite pro basketball player was 00 with the Boston Celtics, Tbert Parrish, what a talent & a super class act, and you didn't take him to the hoop if you were smart.
March maddness is unbelieveable. Great games accorss the board. The best show in sports.
The greatest quote in that entire article was, "
I think our mentality was we wanted to be the toughest team," Dale said. "We just wanted to -- we knew it was going to be a hard-fought game and that we just needed to stay poised and be tough."
As a college coach, that is what we all hope for in our athletes. Toughness, mentally, will cause any athlete to be successful later on in the game of life. Congrats to the Cornell coaches and players. Well done
Sergio, if you are correct than your mother and offspring need to swing to practice!
The real College championships happen this weekend. The NCAA Div I wrestling championships. Where atheles have a 90%+ graduation rate. Basketball is a thug sport full of gang bangers..... Who F in cares! Oh, I forgot the communist in the whitehouse does!
how do the schools pay for these programs when no one even goes to the games. the florida gonzaga game has maybe a couple hundred people. the whole upper deck is empty. why are tax payers and consumers paying for things we don't even care about. anyone else see a problem here. we should be boycotting all businesses and complaining to our state governments about the over spending on college sports thats paid for by tax payers and consumers.
(response to agt4085)
Men's basketball and football are revenue producing sports at most Division 1 schools that largely support entire athletic programs. I believe schools that participate in the NCAA tournament also get paid a share of the tv money that is paid to the NCAA for the right to broadcast these games. This is also a revenue producer for the venues that host these games, including the surrounding hotels, restaurants, shops and other businesses, which creates numerous jobs during the tournaments. We need more such events to boost our economy, not less.