QUICK HITS
• Brian Earl will make his Newman Arena debut as head coach when the Big Red opens the 2016-17 home schedule against Central New York rival Colgate on Wednesday, Nov. 16 at 7 p.m.
• The game will be available live on the Ivy League Digital Network, with Barry Leonard and Eric Taylor '05 on the call locally on 96.3 FM The Buzzer.
• Earl, one of the greatest players in Princeton basketball history, served as assistant and associate head coach at his alma mater and helped his program to a 143-69 overall mark, a 72-26 league mark and five postseason appearances since the 2009-10 season.
• Earl will coach against his best friend from eighth grade, sixth-year Colgate head coach Matt Langel.
• The pair was not only great friends, but also found them on opposite sides of the great Princeton-Penn rivalry.
• Earl, the 1999 Ivy League Player of the year and a three-time Ivy champion, graduated with an Ivy League-record 281 3-pointers, a mark that stood until Cornell's Ryan Wittman '10 surpassed him in 2010, and closed his career ranked fifth all-time at Princeton with 1,428 points.
• Langel was part of two Ivy League titles at Penn, where he scored 1,191 points and hit 201 3-pointers, good for fourth all-time at Penn.
• The Big Red will look to get into the win column for the first time this season after suffering consecutive road losses to Binghamton (68-62) and Siena (89-78) to kick off the campaign.
• Cornell has struggled shooting the ball over its first two games, hitting just 23 percent of its 3-point shots (11-of-48), but has significantly turned around a rebounding margin that was -10.4 a season ago (345th of 346 Division I teams) to a +3.5 per game.
• Sophomore Matt Morgan leads the Big Red in scoring (16.0 ppg.) and rebounding (8.0 rpg.) through two games.
• Morgan was the nation's fifth-leading freshman scorer in the country a year ago (54th overall) and broke the conference's rookie scoring record after a 2015-16 campaign that saw his average 18.9 ppg.
• Senior guard Robert Hatter, the league's third-leading scorer a season ago, is posting 12.5 points, 7.0 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 1.0 steals and is 75 points shy of becoming the school's 26th 1,000-point scorer.
• Classmate Stone Gettings has shown to be one of the most improved players in the Ancient Eight, averaging 15.0 points, 6.0 rebounds and 3.5 assists in two games, significantly up from last season's 2.1 points, 1.8 rebounds and 0.3 assists per night.
• In all, the Big Red returns better than 97 percent of its minutes, points, rebounds and assists from last season.
• Cornell enjoyed a 10-day foreign trip to Spain in August, going 3-0 and getting a chance to bond with its new coaching staff.
• A pair of sophomores played big roles during the team's trip to Spain, with Gettings (9.3 ppg., 4.3 rpg., 3.3 apg. in Spain) and Whiteside (7.0 ppg., 5.3 rpg.,) showing that they likely will play more significant roles in the lineup in 2016-17.
• Cornell played outstanding defense throughout its three-game foreign tour, holding opponents to 61.3 ppg. while shooting 30 percent from the floor and 25 percent from the 3-point arc.
  • Cornell head coach Brian Earl is in his first season at Cornell (0-2, .000; 0-0 Ivy, .000).
• Earl became the sixth Robert E. Gallagher '44 Coach of Men's Basketball at Cornell on April 18, 2016.

ABOUT COLGATE
• The Raiders lost its opener at Syracuse 83-55, its 51st consecutive loss to the Orange dating back to 1961.
• Colgate was picked sixth in the Patriot League's preseason poll after a 13-17 season (9-9 Patriot).
• The Raiders return four starters and 13 letter winners, including double figure scorers Jordan Swopshire (10.6 ppg.) and Tom Rivard (10.5 ppg.).
• Colgate also returns 2015-16 Patriot League All-Rookie Team member Malcolm Regisford (5.7 ppg., 5.9 rpg.) and junior Sean O'Brien is (8.6 ppg.).
• Colgate opened the season on Friday, Nov. 11 at Syracuse with the Raiders attempting to snap a 50-game losing skid against its Central New York foe.
• Sixth-year head coach Matt Langel brings a 61-96 career record on the Colgate sidelines into the matchup.

THE SERIES
• The Big Red leads the all-time series 73-54 dating back to the first meeting in the 1901-02 campaign.
• Cornell won 16 straight contests between 1961-69 and 11 more in a row from 1981-91.
• The Raiders have a narrow lead in the recent series, winning six of the last 11 meetings.
• A year ago, Cornell won a classic 101-98 contest in double overtime behind 33 points by Robert Hatter.
  • Cornell surrendered a 19-point lead, lost three starters to fouls, including leading scorer Robert Hatter, as well as all the momentum that came with both.
• Then, despite all of that, the Big Red persevered.
• In one of the most exciting games imaginable, with last second shots, epic runs and impressive individual performances, Cornell escaped with its first win of the 2015-16 season in double overtime over Colgate 101-98 at Cotterell Court on Nov. 16, 2015.
• Robert Hatter led the Big Red with 33 points on 11-of-20 shooting in just 27 minutes and added five rebounds, two assists and two steals before fouling out.
• Matt Morgan, despite shooting just 4-of-14, netted 16 points, seven rebounds and two steals and both Wil Bathurst and Darryl Smith had 14 points.
• Bathurst added seven rebounds and two blocked shots and Smith had three rebounds and three assists.
• Onuorah played a career-high 37 minutes, including nearly both overtimes with a pair of fouls, and had nine points, 14 rebounds, three blocks and two steals.
• Cornell held a 51-45 edge on the glass and connected on 45 percent of its shots.
• Colgate's Alex Swopshire had 19 points and seven rebounds and both Malcolm Regisford (17 points, eight rebounds) and Alex Ramon (17 points, four rebounds, three assists) were among four Raiders in double figures.
• Austin Tillotson rounded out the group with 15 points and 11 assists.
  • Cornell is 145-121 all-time against current members of the Patriot League, including 73-54 against Colgate.
• The Big Red has also played American (1-1), Army (20-13), Boston University (2-2), Bucknell (23-25), Holy Cross (2-3), Lafayette (9-11), Lehigh (13-9), Loyola (MD) (1-2) and Navy (2-1).
• This is the first of two scheduled contests with Patriot League opponents this season.
• The Big Red visits Lafayette on Sunday, Nov. 20 at 2 p.m.

A WIN OVER COLGATE WOULD ...
• give head coach Brian Earl his first win as a collegiate head coach.
• extend the Big Red's win streak in the Colgate series to three overall and also make it three straight at Newman Arena.
• give Cornell four straight wins over Patriot League opponents.
• be the 1,235th in program history (1,234-1,389 in 117 seasons, .470).

LAST TIME OUT
• Siena used a dominant effort from seniors Marquis Wright and Brett Bisping to win its season opener, topping Cornell 89-78 on Nov. 13 at the Times Union Center.
• Wright (31 points, five rebounds, five assists) and Bisping (23 points, 15 rebounds) made sure the Saints wouldn't repeat last season's fate against the Big Red after surrendering a 14-point second half lead.
• This time, the Big Red got back within three in the second half before the Saints were able to close the game out.
• Sophomore Stone Gettings had a career-high 16 points and senior Robert Hatter had a tremendous floor game with 12 points, a career-high 10 rebounds and four assists.
• Matt Morgan tied a team-best with 16 points and ripped down eight boards and both JoJo Fallas and Josh Warren had 10 points to round out five double figure scorers.
• Warren added six rebounds in his second collegiate game.
• The Big Red played without senior center David Onuorah who didn't make the trip due to illness.

MILESTONE WATCH
• Senior Robert Hatter is 70 points from becoming the school's 26th 1,000-point scorer.
• Hatter needs two rebounds to reach 200.
• With both milestones would be just the 16th player to score 1,000 points, grab 200 rebounds and dish off 150 assists.
• Senior JoJo Fallas is three points shy of 250.
• Senior Darryl Smith needs 32 points to reach 500 for his career and is 36 rebounds from 250.
• Junior Wil Bathurst needs two rebounds to reach 100.
• Sophomore Matt Morgan needs 24 3-pointers to hit 100 for his career.
• He also is 10 steals shy of 50.

PLAYER NOTES TO KNOW
• Matt Morgan, a four-time Ivy • Sophomore Matt Morgan, a four-time Ivy League Rookie of the Week, averaged 22.6 points, 2.9 rebounds, 2.1 assists, 1.1 steals and 0.3 blocks while shooting 43/34/81 in Ivy League play last season.
• Morgan has a string of 19 consecutive games scoring in double figures.
• The Cornell starting backcourt of Morgan and Hatter are combining to average 15.0 rebounds per game, all coming on the defensive end.
• The trio of sophomores Stone Gettings and Matt Morgan and senior Robert Hatter have been in double figures in each of the team's first two games.
• In two games so far this season, sophomore Stone Gettings has already doubled up his assist total from last season (three) with seven in just 60 minutes of action.
• He also has a pair of double figure scoring efforts after hitting that mark just once as a freshman.
• In two games off the bench, freshman Josh Warren has an impressive 16 points and 10 rebounds in just 35 total minutes.
• Other than Matt Morgan (40 percent, 6-of-15), Cornell players are shooting just 5-of-33 (.152) from 3-point range so far this season.
• Senior David Onuorah became the sixth player in school history to reach 100 career blocks and enters the home opener with 119.
• Onuorah was one of two Ivy League student-athletes (Harvard skiier Maile Sapp was the other) chosen to represent the conference at the NCAA Student-Athlete Leadership Forum in Phoenix, Arizona this past April.
• Senior JoJo Fallas competed for Team USA at the 14th European Maccabi Games in Berlin, Germany from July 27-August 5, 2015. Fallas was one of the leaders on a team that won a silver medal, going 4-0 before dropping the gold medal game to Russia 98-87 despite his game-high 28 points. The event was the largest gathering of Jewish people in Berlin since World War II, as more than 2,000 Jewish athletes from 36 countries attended.
• Fifth-year senior center Braxston Bunce was a two-year member of Team Canada's Under-18 national team, including competing at the 2012 FIBA Americas Championship in Brazil. Canada went 4-1, with Bunce averaging 1.5 points, 2.0 rebounds and 1.5 assists in two contests.
• The Big Red returns better than 97 percent of its minutes, points, rebounds and assists from last season.
 
TEAM NOTES TO KNOW
• Brian Earl and his brother Dan (VMI) one of five active sets of brothers directing Division I programs, joining Scott (Baylor) and Bryce (Vanderbilt) Drew; Bobby (Arizona State) and Danny (Rhode Island) Hurley; Joe (Yale) and James (Boston University) Jones; and Sean (Arizona) and Archie (Dayton) Miller.
• Fourth-year assistant coach Jon Jaques was a starter and senior captain on the 2009-10 Cornell team that advanced to the NCAA Sweet 16.
• Members of the Cornell basketball team represent 10 states and one Canadian province.
• Cornell has played in 46 different states, as well as in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Australia, France and Spain. The only states the Big Red has not played in are Alaska, North Dakota, Mississippi and Wyoming - and the Big Red will cross Wyoming off the list for state 47 when it visits the Cowboys on Dec. 17 as part of the Las Vegas Invitational.
• This year's schedule features 17 games away from home and more than 12,700 miles of travel —more than halfway around the earth (circumference of 24,901 miles).
• Including the Big Red's August trip to Spain and Cornell basketball will log more than 21,000 miles of travel in just eight months.
• You could travel back and forth between New York City and Los Angeles three times and still have enough mileage left over to cycle to entire Tour de France course – twice.
• Cornell hit 233 3-pointers as a team last season, good for fourth in a single season — nine of the last 10 seasons rank in the top 10.
• The Big Red ranked in the top 10 in both steals (fifth, 217)

CORNELL SEVENTH IN IVY PRESEASON POLL
• The Cornell men's basketball team, under the direction of first-year coach Brian Earl, was picked seventh in the 2016-17 Ivy League media preseason poll.
• The media poll was made up up 17 voters - two from media covering each of the conference's eight schools and one from a national media member.
• Princeton was picked first with 12 first place votes and 130 points, while Harvard was a close second with five first place votes and 123 points.
• Defending champion Yale was slotted third (101) and Penn was picked fourth (72). Rounding out the field was Columbia (61), Dartmouth (48), the Big Red (42) and Brown (35).
• Cornell was picked to finish eighth two seasons in a row only to finish fifth and sixth, respectively.
• For a third straight season, the Big Red is expecting to upset the preseason rankings.
• Finishing fourth would give Cornell a spot in the first-ever Ivy League men's basketball tournament, and it has the weapons to challenge for a spot to compete for the automatic NCAA bid.
 
RED-WHITE GAME
• The Red team led wire-to-wire behind 20 points from sophomore Matt Morgan and 14 from classmate Donovan Wright for a 57-46 win over the White team at the annual Red-White Scrimmage on Saturday, Oct. 22 at Newman Arena.
• Morgan added three rebounds, three assists and two steals in the contest, while freshman Josh Warren had six points, six rebounds and four assists.
• Junior Wil Bathurst chipped in six points, four rebounds and three assists for the winning team, which had 13 assists to just four turnovers and made 7-of-16 3-pointers.
• Sophomore Stone Gettings (16 points, four rebounds) and senior Robert Hatter (15 points) led the White team.
• JoJo Fallas added nine points, five rebounds and two assists and senior David Onuorah had four points and a game-high nine rebounds.
• The intrasquad scrimmage was comprised of two 12-minute halves.

HOW TO FOLLOW CORNELL
• There are numerous ways to follow the Big Red through the 2016-17 basketball season.
• Men's basketball games will be broadcast on 96.3 FM The Buzzer for the 2015-16 season. Longtime voice of the Big Red Barry Leonard returns on the call with the play-by-play, while former All-Ivy center Eric Taylor '05 is on board to do color analysis.
• A half-hour pregame show and postgame analysis will enable Big Red fans to follow Coach Brian Earl's team throughout the season.
• The Big Red's home contests will all be broadcast live with streaming video as part of the IvyLeagueDigitalNetwork subscription service. Visit www.IvyLeagueDigitalNetwork.com for all the latest information on Cornell broadcasts.
• You can follow the team on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Highlights, interviews and features on all 37 of Cornell's varsity sports can be found at www.youtube.com/cornellathletics, www.facebook.com/cornellathletics or www.twitter.com/cornellsports.
 
CORNELL BASKETBALL HONORED BY NCAA ... AGAIN
• Cornell University ranks among the best according to the annual NCAA Division I Academic Progress Report (APR) for 2014-15 that was released this past May.
• The APR measures semester-by-semester records for every individual team in Division I with regard to each team members' continuing eligibility, retention and progress toward graduation.
• The NCAA "commends" teams that have APR scores in the top 10 percent within their sport, with the minimum necessary score ranging from 975 to a perfect mark of 1000 depending on the range of team scores within that sport.
• Men's basketball has been recognized eight times in the 11 years since the APR began, including six consecutive years.
 
CORNELL BEYOND THE ARC - 700 AND COUNTING
• Cornell hit seven 3-pointers at Siena on Nov. 13, 2016, its 774th straight game with at least one made 3-point field goal.
• With six 3-pointers against Oberlin on Jan. 11, 2014, Cornell extended its streak of games with at least one 3-pointer to 700.
• Matt Morgan hit the program's 5,000th 3-pointer when he hit a long 3-pointer at the halftime buzzer at Georgia Tech on Nov. 13, 2015.
• The last time Cornell did not hit a 3-pointer was against Denison in the 1988-89 season opener (0-for-2).
• Since the 3-point shot came into effect in NCAA play during the 1986-87 season, Cornell has hit at least one shot behind the arc in 820 of 824 games, connecting on 5,236 treys, an average of 6.4 per game.
 
CORNELL IN OVERTIME
• Dating back to the first overtime game against Penn way back in 1922, Cornell is 40-48 in games that go an extra period.
• Cornell is 6-9 in multiple overtime games, with the longest game for the Big Red being a five overtime contest against Princeton, won by the Tigers 66-61 on Feb. 24, 1979 at Barton Hall.
• Cornell is 29-18 in home overtime games, 2-2 in neutral contests and 10-27 in road games.
 
BIG RED HOOPS ENJOYS FOREIGN TRIP TO SPAIN
• Cornell University has one of the broadest reaches of any educational institution in the world, and that reach was evident when the men's basketball team made a goodwill tour of Spain in August.
• First year head coach Brian Earl and his staff had their first extended opportunity to work with the team when it took a 10-day trip overseas that included three contests.
• Starting with a five-day training camp in Ithaca prior to leaving, the team visited Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona prior to the new semester beginning.
• The Big Red enjoyed time in all three cities, visiting the Royal Palace of Madrid, attending a Barcelona soccer match, and touring the country's former capital of Toledo as well as the Valencia bullfighting museum.
• Seventeen players and eight staff members in total made the trip to Europe.
• The Big Red went 3-0 on the trip, defeating Eurocolegio Casvi 67-52 in Madrid, Valencia Select 69-63 and Sant Julia Select 72-69 in Barcelona.
• With minutes nearly evenly split among the 13 players who saw action on the trip, rising sophomore Matt Morgan led the team in scoring (14.0 ppg.), rebounding (7.0 rpg.) and steals (1.7 spg.), while senior Robert Hatter (13.3 ppg., 6.7 rpg., 3.7 apg.) also filled the stat sheet.
• Sophomores Stone Gettings (9.3 ppg., 4.3 rpg., 3.3 apg.) and Troy Whiteside (7.0 ppg., 5.3 rpg., 1.7 apg.) ranked third and fourth among the team's top scorers.
• Defensively, the Big Red allowed its three opponents to shoot just 30 percent from the floor, 25 percent from 3-point range and outrebounded opponents by 7.7 boards per game.
• Cornell has previously made foreign trips to play in places like Cuba and Australia, with the last escape coming in the spring of 2007 when the Big Red visited France.

MILLER '15 SPENDS SUMMER WITH UTAH JAZZ
• Former Cornell All-Ivy forward Shonn Miller '15 signed an NBA summer league deal to play for the Utah Jazz's entry in the Salt Lake City Summer League.
• He averaged 2.8 points and 1.8 rebounds in five games for the Jazz, including an eight-point, five-rebound performance in a win over the Portland TrailBlazers.
•Miller ranked second in the Ivy League in scoring (16.8 ppg.), rebounding (8.5 rpg.) and free-throw percentage (.834) and among the top 10 in blocks (fourth, 1.8) and steals (eighth, 1.3) en route to earning unanimous first-team all-league and second-team NABC all-district honors as a senior in 2014-15.
• He was one of 26 finalists for the Lefty Driesell Award as the nation's Defensive Player of the Year.
• he became the first Cornellian and fifth Ivy player to record 1,000 points, 600 rebounds, 100 blocks and 100 steals in a career.
• He sits in the top 20 all-time in scoring (19th, 1,065), rebounding (14th, 608), steals (11th, 126), blocked shots (fourth, 154), free throws made (13th, 266) and free-throw percentage (18th. .785).
• Following his graduation, Miller played one season at the University of Connecticut as a graduate transfer, earning American Athletic Conference honorable mention accolades.
 • Miller was taken in the first round of the NBA D-League draft (13th overall) by the Greensboro Swarm, an affiliate of the Charlotte Hornets.

NEXT UP
• Cornell will return to the road for a pair of contests, starting with a visit to Lafayette on Sunday, Nov. 20 at 2 p.m. in Easton, Pa.
• The Big Red will then face Monmouth on Tuesday, Nov. 22 at 7 p.m. prior to the Thanksgiving holiday.