Box Score Box Score
Video Highlights

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Senior Ryan Wittman scored 27 points and hit every big shot all night and Cornell matched its school record win total by topping Harvard 79-70 on Friday evening at a sold-out Lavietes Pavilion. The Big Red improved to 22-4 (8-1 Ivy), while Harvard slipped to 17-6 (6-3 Ivy).

Wittman added eight rebounds and two blocked shots while making six 3-pointers in front of more than a dozen NBA scouts in attendance. He also had an assist and a steal in the victory. The 6-6 Wittman moved into sixth-place on the Ivy League scoring chart (1,885 points), surpassing former Harvard great Joe Carrabino'85 with 1,880. He became the first Ivy League player to reach 350 career 3-point field goals.



Classmate Louis Dale added 20 points, five assists and four rebounds and Jeff Foote and Jon Jaques added 11 apiece. Foote also had seven rebounds and four assists. The Big Red shot 50 percent from the floor and connected on 12-of-23 from beyond the 3-point arc. Cornell also held a decided 31-20 edge on the backboards, including 14-3 on the offensive glass.

The Big Red's 22 wins matches the school record set in 2007-08 during a 22-6 campaign, while the victory also assures Cornell of its sixth straight winning season in Ivy play, a first for the program. Cornell's 12 3-pointers gives the Big Red 245, a new single season record.

Harvard got 24 points from Jeremy Lin and 14 from Kyle Casey as the Crimson shot 49 percent form the floor and connected on 32-of-34 free throws (94 percent). Both Lin and Casey hit on 10-of-11 shots from the line. Oliver McNally posted eight points.

Wittman put on a shooting display, hitting 10-of-20 shots of varying degrees of difficulty and length. Maybe his biggest shot of the game silenced the Crimson crowd after Harvard had cut a 17-point second half deficit to five with 8:24 left on a Christian Webster trey. After a quick timeout to stem the momentum, Foote found Wittman for his fifth 3-pointer of the night with 7:54 remaining. After Lin missed a jumper that Wittman rebounded, Dale answered with a shot from beyond the arc to extend the lead back to double figures. Harvard would only cut the deficit to single digits with a last-second layup against token Big Red pressure in the final seconds.

The first half was gunslinger affair between Wittman and Lin, who scored 16 points apiece. While the seniors went back and forth, the Big Red defense forced 12 Crimson turnovers, scoring 16 points off the Harvard miscues. Foote added nine points and four rebounds, while Dale had six points and four assists. Harvard took 15 less shots than Cornell in the first 20 minutes as the home team connected on 16-of-18 shots from the charity stripe to stay in the game. The Crimson shot 56 percent from the floor, but were 0-of-2 from 3-point range, while the Big Red shot 52 percent and connected on 5-of-11 from beyond the arc.

The second half opened with Harvard almost immediately cutting the 43-34 Big Red halftime lead to seven, but Cornell answered with a 7-0 run, with Wittman hitting a 12-foot jumper and drawing a foul from Lin for a three-point play and then hitting a 15-footer to give Cornell the 50-38 edge. Dale hit 3-pointers on three consecutive possessions over the span of 1:44, the last giving the visitors its biggest lead of the night (61-44) with 12:05 remaining. Harvard went on a run of its own, a 12-0 spurt over 3:17 to get back within 61-56, but Wittman signaled the end of their momentum with his trey.

Cornell will attempt to sweep the season series with Dartmouth when it visits Leede Arena on Saturday at 7 p.m. in Hanover, N.H.