ITHACA, N.Y. – The Big Red women's lacrosse team got great news on Wednesday night when Penn beat Princeton, clinching a spot in the Ivy League Tournament for Cornell. Even though the tournament spot is already clinched, Cornell will have to take care of its own business Saturday at Brown in its regular-season finale if it wants a shot at the No. 3 seed. First draw is set for noon.

GAME INFORMATION
GAME #15: No. 12/13 Cornell at Brown
GAME TIME: Saturday, April 28, 12 p.m.
GAME SITE: Stevenson Field (Providence, R.I.)
SERIES RECORD: Cornell leads 18-14
LAST MEETING: Cornell won 14-7 on April 16, 2011
2011-12 RECORDS: Cornell (10-4, 4-2 Ivy League); Brown (6-7, 1-5 Ivy League)
LIVE STATS: Brown Live Stats
LIVE AUDIO: Brown Audio
LIVE VIDEO:  Brown Video

ABOUT THE BIG RED
The Big Red is coming off a nine-goal victory at Binghamton midweek, but the best news the team got this week was that it had earned a trip to the Ivy League Tournament thanks to other conference results. Cornell will compete in the league tournament for the first time since 2010. Against Binghamton, Kelly Lang led the way by scoring four goals. It was the first game in her career scoring more than one goal. Caroline Salisbury also had a hat trick with three. Cornell has eclipsed its win totals from each of the last three years and its goal totals from each of the last nine. The team is two wins away from equaling its 2006 total of 11. A senior-heavy team with 10 returning starters from 2011, Cornell is looking to make the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2006.

HEAD COACH JENNY GRAAP
Jenny Graap returned to her alma mater in 1997 with one goal in mind: to build the Cornell women's lacrosse team into a championship contender. Now entering her 15th year at the helm, the 2002 Intercollegiate Women's Lacrosse Coaches Association Coach of the Year and 2006 Inside Lacrosse Magazine and IWLCA Northeast Coach of the Year has developed the Big Red women's lacrosse program into one of the most successful in the nation. She has posted a 129-88 record at Cornell and earned her 160th career win against Binghamton on Tuesday.

ABOUT BROWN
The Bears, based in Providence, R.I., have lost four of their last five games and hold a 6-7 record on the season. Sitting at 1-5 in the Ivy League, Brown will be looking to play spoiler against the Big Red this weekend. The Bears' lone Ivy League win came against winless Columbia. Kaela McGilloway tops the team with 44 points on 22 goals and 22 assists, but Bre Hudgins is the team leader with 23 goals. In net, Kellie Roddy and Isabel Harvey have split time, and both their goals against averages are above 11.
The Bears are coached by Keely McDonald, a 2000 grad of Brown who is in her ninth year in charge of the program.

THE SERIES WITH BROWN
The Bears and the Big Red have been facing off since 1980, and Cornell holds a slim 18-14 advantage in the series. Cornell has dominated the series for more than a decade, winning the last 12 meetings. The last time Brown defeated the Big Red was a 12-11 overtime game in 1999. That 1999 win was the Bears' fourth straight in the series.

A WIN AGAINST BROWN WOULD…
…be the 13th consecutive win against the Bears…make the Big Red 7-0 in true road games this season…give Cornell more than 10 wins for the first time since 2006 and just the eighth time in program history…end the team's Ivy League regular season with five wins for the first time since 2008.

IVY LEAGUE TOURNAMENT SCENARIOS
While the Big Red has guaranteed itself a spot in the Ivy League Tournament, its seed is still up in the air. If Dartmouth beats Harvard on Friday night, Cornell would get the three seed, Dartmouth the two and Harvard the four. If Harvard beats Dartmouth and Cornell loses to Brown, the Big Red would get the four seed and Harvard would get the three. If Harvard beats Dartmouth and Cornell beats Brown, Cornell would get the third seed while Harvard would take the fourth.

TEWAARATON NOMINEE
Cornell senior attack Jessi Steinberg has been named one of 25 nominees for the Tewaaraton Award, The Tewaaraton Foundation announced Wednesday afternoon. Steinberg, who leads Cornell with 44 goals and 19 points for 63 assists, is one of just two nominees from the Ivy League.

WINNER, WINNER
Freshman Carly Gniewek has played in five games as a freshman, but Tuesday's game against Binghamton saw her earn her first victory. Coming in to replace Courtney Gallagher 15 minutes into the game, Gniewek played a career-high 45 minutes and made four saves in the 17-8 win over the Bearcats. Gniewek has yet to start a game.

IVY LEAGUE PLAYER OF THE WEEK
For a 10-point week where she recorded two hat tricks and controlled 10 draws, Cornell junior attackman Caroline Salisbury was named the Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week on Monday. She is second on the team with 35 goals and 51 points.

SCORCHING SCORING PACE
The Big Red has already eclipsed its goal totals from the last nine seasons. Averaging over 14 goals per game this year, the Big Red would reach 216 goals if that pace held against Brown. With one more 14-goal game in the Ivy League tournament, the Big Red would surpass the 2002 team's record of 228 goals by two goals.

SENIOR DAY
April 21 was the final regular-season home game for a group of nine women's lacrosse seniors. Kyla Dambach, Beth Halayko, Cacki Helmer, Katie Kirk, Olivia Knotts, Shannon McHugh, Ali O'Neil, Jessi Steinberg and Shannon Tierney went out on top at Schoellkopf with an eight-goal win over the Bulldogs.

TEN-YEAR ANNIVERSARY
At halftime the game on April 21, the Big Red will honored the contributions of its 2002 team. Posting a 16-2 record and advancing to the national semifinals for the first time in team history, the 2002 Cornell women's lacrosse team was also the first Cornell women's team in any sport to make it to the NCAA Final Four. Eight players, including all-time leading scorer Jaimee Reynolds, were in attendance.

TOUGH STRETCH COMPLETE
The Big Red finished its toughest stretch of the year, playing five consecutive games against ranked opposition. No. 8 Penn, No. 16 Princeton, No. 6/10 Dartmouth, No. 11/12 Loyola and No. 2 Syracuse all faced Cornell in a four-week span, and the Big Red emerged with a 2-3 record in those games. The team dropped a one-goal game to Penn, beat Princeton by one goal in overtime, lost by two to Dartmouth, upended Loyola by seven before losing to Syracuse by the same amount.

NATIONAL PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
For her career-high, five-goal effort against then-No. 11 Loyola on April 14, Cornell junior attacker Caroline Salisbury was named the WomensLax.com Player of the Week on Monday.
Three weeks earlier, senior attack Jessi Steinberg was named the WomensLax.com Player of the Week on April 2. Steinberg earned the award thanks to a four-goal, one-assist effort against Princeton. Her fourth goal of the game proved to be the overtime game-winner.

RANK AND FILE
Cornell's victory over Loyola was its third win against a ranked opponent this year. The Big Red started its Ivy League slate with a win over then-ranked Harvard, defeated Princeton on the road in overtime, and then conquered Loyola on Saturday. Cornell's four losses this season have also all come against ranked teams.

OFFENSIVE DEFENSEMAN
Defenseman and captain Cacki Helmer has scored two goals this season, tripling her career total entering the season. She scored in the game against Jacksonville where it seemed like every Big Red player was getting in on the action, but she also managed to get a goal against No. 2 Syracuse last Tuesday night, something only five other layers on the team can say. She now has three goals in her career.

CHARITABLE DONATION
The Big Red announced that it had raised more than $2,200 toward breast cancer research thanks to the efforts of its “Pink” game on Saturday against Dartmouth. Cornell's funds will all be donated to the Cancer Resource Center of the Finger Lakes.

TIGERS BEAT
Cornell's 13-12 overtime victory at Princeton on Saturday was just the team's fourth victory ever against the Tigers. Cornell, though, has now beaten Princeton in its last two trips to New Jersey.

OVERTIME SUCCESS
The Princeton win was Cornell's first overtime game of the year and was its first road overtime win since April 10, 1993 at Yale. Cornell last played in overtime on March 20, 2011 against No. 6 Notre Dame. In that game Cornell also emerged victorious by a 6-5 margin. The team – which has won its last three overtime games – last lost in an extra period on Feb. 24, 2007 against Rutgers.

QUICK ON THE DRAW
Senior midfielders and co-captains Shannon McHugh and Katie Kirk are quickly moving up the Big Red's all-time draw control list. Kirk is now all alone in fifth at 99 draw controls and is just four out of third place. McHugh, meanwhile, is now in sole possession of eighth place all-time and would move up to seven with one more draw control.

SCORING STREAKS
Through 14 games this season, two Cornell players have scored a point in every contest. Caroline Salisbury has each tallied at least one point in 14 contests and most recently scored three goals at Binghamton. Shannon McHugh, who missed the Columbia game on March 10, has scored in all 13 games she has played and extended her streak with a goal against Binghamton.

GOALS, GOALS, GOALS
The Big Red's 22-goal outburst at Jacksonville on March 20 tied the team's all-time record, set on May 1, 1994 against Rutgers. Cornell had scored 20 goals in a game just twice in its history before this season, but after the Jacksonville contest the Big Red had scored 20 goals twice in eight days. Cornell also recorded a 21-goal effort against Canisius on March 13.

NATIONALLY RANKED
Cornell moved up one spot to No. 12 in the IWLCA Coaches' Poll this week.  The Big Red is In the third-highest ranked Ivy League team, coming in two spots behind No. 10 Penn and one spot behind No. 11 Dartmouth. In the deBeer Media Poll, Cornell remained where it was last week at No. 13.

BALANCED SCORING
Last season, Jessi Steinberg led the team with 38 goals, nearly doubling Katie Kirk's second-best mark on the team of 22. Steinberg is at 44 goals already this season, but Caroline Salisbury and Olivia Knotts have already surpassed Kirk's second-best 22 from last year. This year, 11 different players have contributed at least six goals: Steinberg (44), Salisbury (38), Knotts (29), Shannon McHugh (17), Katie Kirk (17), Amanda D'Amico (13), Lindsay Toppe (nine), Kelly Lang (eight) Chelsea Rowe (seven), Lauren Halpern (seven) and Sarah Hefner (seven) are making sure the Big Red attack is dangerous all over. Last season, only six players all year reached the five-goal mark.

HATS OFF
Cornell has had a player record a hat trick in all of its games this year. In the season opener at Rutgers, Olivia Knotts scored the game-winning goal with 52 seconds left to complete her hat trick. Amanda D'Amico got her third goal late against Harvard. Against Colgate on March 7, Caroline Salisbury and Sarah Hefner each earned a hat trick, and Salisbury had four goals to her name.

In the home opener against Columbia, Jessi Steinberg scored four times, Katie Kirk has three goals and Knotts had her second hat trick of the season. Against Canisius, Steinberg scored five goals while Salisbury had three. In the Notre Dame contest, both Knotts (five) and Steinberg (four) eclipsed the three-goal mark.

At Jacksonville, Steinberg (three), Knotts (four) and D'Amico (three) continued the impressive streak that has now lasted more than half of the 15-game season. Steinberg also kept the streak alive against Penn when she scored five goals for the second time this year. Against Princeton, four players recorded a hat trick: Steinberg (four goals), McHugh, Salisbury and Kirk.

In the Dartmouth contest, Knotts and Salisbury kept the streak alive by each scoring three times. Knotts (three), Steinberg (four) and Salisbury (five) all reached the three-goal plateau on Saturday against Loyola. Salisbury continued her hat trick streak with three goals against Syracuse and five against Yale. Steinberg also had a hat trick against Yale (five goals).

At Binghamton on Tuesday, Kelly Lang recorded her first career hat trick with four goals, and Salisbury had three goals as well. Salisbury has now scored at least three goals in six consecutive games.

NATIONAL NUMBERS
Through last weekend's games, Cornell ranks near the top of the country in multiple statistical categories. The Big Red's scoring offense of 14.31 goals per game puts it at 10th in the country. Cornell's 14.15 draw controls per game also has the team 14th nationally.

Individually, Jessi Steinberg sits in 12th in the nation with her 4.62 points per game and is also in 16th with 3.23 goals per game. Cacki Helmer's 3.08 ground balls per game keeps her in seventh nationally.

IVY STATISTICS
The Big Red continues to lead the Ivy League in goals per game with 14.50 and is second in assists per game with 5.29. The team scores more points per game (19.79), wins more draws (14.21) and takes more shots (31.79) per game than any team among the Ancient Eight.

As an individual, Jessi Steinberg leads the league in goals per game (3.14) while Caroline Salisbury is tied for third in that category (2.71). Salisbury is sixth in the Ivy League with 1.21 assists per contest, just behind Steinberg's 1.36 and ahead of Knotts' 1.00. Cacki Helmer is league's best player with 3.21 ground balls per game, and Shannon McHugh's 3.08 draw controls per game has her in fourth. Helmer is also tied for first in the league with 2.00  caused turnovers per game.

CAREER NUMBERS WATCH
Against Binghamton:
• Courtney Gallagher earned her 40th save.
• Cacki Helmer caused her 60th turnover.
• Katie Kirk picked up her 80th point.
• Carly Gniewek earned her first career win.
• Shannon McHugh picked up her 75th career ground ball.

Approaching career numbers:
• Shannon Tierney and Lindsay Toppe's next goals will be their 10th.
• Jessi Steinberg is three goals away from sole possession of second place in team history.
• Katie Kirk's next ground ball will be her 90th, and her next draw control will be her 100th.
• Shannon McHugh is one draw control away from 90.

UP NEXT
With the regular season complete, the Big Red will travel to the Ivy League tournament next weekend. The opponent and time of game will not be determined until after the game against Brown.