STORYLINE:
• The Big Red men's basketball team will ring in the new year with a great test prior to Ivy League play when it visits America East contender Albany on Monday, Jan. 2 at 7 p.m. at SEFCU Arena.
• The game will be broadcast live on ESPN3 and can be heard locally on 96.3 FM The Buzzer with Barry Leonard providing the play-by-play.
• Morgan leads Cornell in scoring (18.7 ppg.) and 3-pointers (44), while ranking second in steals (12) and third in both rebounding (4.8 rpg.) and assists (2.0 apg.).
• Morgan was named to the all-tournament team at the Continental Tire Las Vegas Invitational after averaging 19.8 points, 4.0 rebounds and 2.3 assists and connecting on 18 3-pointers in four games.
• Senior Robert Hatter became the 26th player in school history to reach the 1,000-point plateau with a 20-point performance at USC and has been outstanding as of late, averaging 16.6 points, 6.2 rebounds and 3.2 assists in the last five games while shooting 45 percent from the floor.
• Sophomore Stone Gettings continues to emerge as one of the top post players in the Ivy League and is averaging 12.3 ppg., 5.5 rpg. and 2.5 apg. while shooting 40 percent from 3-point range.
• Gettings averaged 20.8 points, 5.8 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.0 blocks while shooting 68 percent from 3-point range over four games in the Continental Tire Las Vegas Invitational.
• Senior guard JoJo Fallas has started the last 12 games and ranks third on the team in 3-pointers (17), all the while posting a 2.89 assist:turnover ratio - the highest of any Cornellian who has played half the team's minutes in more than 35 years.
• Sophomore Troy Whiteside rounds out three sophomore starters and has reached double figures in scoring in five of the last nine games while shooting 71 percent (25-of-35) in his last six outings.
• Freshman Josh Warren ranks fifth on the team in scoring (5.6 ppg.) and fourth in rebounding (4.8 rpg.), while senior Darryl Smith (3.4 ppg., 2.5 rpg.) and junior Wil Bathurst (3.9 ppg., 3.1 rpg.) are also firmly in the rotation.
• First-year head coach Brian 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, 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.
• 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.

A WIN OVER ALBANY WOULD:
• make Cornell 4-10 on the season.
• start the Big Red off 1-0 in the 2017 calendar year.
• give the Big Red a 3-1 record over the Great Danes in the last four meetings, including a 2-1 mark in Albany.
• make the Big Red 23-26 all-time against teams from the America East.
• be the 1,238th in program history (1,237-1,396 in 117 seasons, .470).

ABOUT ALBANY:
• Albany improved to 8-6 on the season with a 70-67 victory at Columbia on Dec. 30.
• The Great Danes have a win at Penn State (87-81) and victories over Brown (80-76) and Siena (81-72) with a narrow loss to defending Ivy champ Yale (59-55) on its resume.
• Joe Cremo (17.2 ppg., 4.8 rpg., 3.6 apg.) and David Nichols (16.0 ppg., 3.7 rpg., 3.0 apg., 1.3 spg.) lead Albany in scoring, while Greig Stire (7.4 ppg., 6.3 rpg.) and Mike Rowley (7.3 ppg., 6.1 rpg.) are the team's top rebounders.
• The Great Danes are 4-1 at home and dominate the glass, outrebounding opponents by 8.9 per outing.
• Head coach Will Brown, in his 16th season on the Albany sidelines, has guided the program to five conference titles and NCAA appearances, along with a cumulative 247-230 record.

THE CORNELL-ALBANY SERIES:
• Albany leads the all-time series 4-2 after the Great Danes snapped the Big Red's two-game win streak with a 75-70 win in Ithaca exactly a year ago.
• The last four meetings have been decided by five points or less.
• Cornell has split two games in Albany, last winning in the Capital Region to open the 2010-11 season (65-61).

CORNELL VS. THE AMERICA EAST CONFERENCE:
• Cornell is 22-26 all-time against current members of the America East, including 2-4 against Albany.
• The Big Red has also faced Binghamton (9-3), Hartford (0-3), Maine (0-1), New Hampshire (1-3), Stony Brook (4-4), UMass Lowell (1-2) and Vermont (5-6).
• Cornell has never played UMBC.
• The Big Red dropped a 98-96 overtime contest to UMass Lowell on Dec. 29 in Ithaca.

LAST TIME VS. ALBANY:
• Albany had four double figure scorers and used a 45-28 rebounding advantage to hold off the Cornell men's basketball team 75-70 on Jan. 2, 2016 at Newman Arena.
• Cornell trailed by as many as 14 points with just over six minutes to go after a Greig Stire dunk, but Cornell came storming back, getting within three points after Robert Hatter's 3-pointer with 48 seconds remaining.
• The Big Red forced a miss on the other end, but Albany, as they had all night, were able to grab the offensive rebound and were fouled.
• The two free throws proved to put the game out of reach for the home team despite two cracks beyond the arc in the final seconds.
• Freshman Matt Morgan scored 19 points, including 14 in a span of just 5:06 in the first half, to go along with four steals, two assists and two blocked shots.
• Junior Robert Hatter had 18 points with six assists and five rebounds and classmate Darryl Smith chipped in 11 points.
• David Onuorah had six points, five rebounds and three blocked shots.
• As a team, Cornell committed just eight turnovers and had 10 steals and six blocked shots while hitting 10 3-pointers.
• Ray Sanders scored 18 points with four rebounds and three assists, Joe Cremo notched 15 points, Peter Hooley had 13 points, seven rebounds and three assists and Stire had 11 points.
• The Great Danes dominated the glass, as Greg Rowley had nine to go along with four points and five assists, including the game-clinching offensive rebound and free throws.
• Six players had at least four boards in the win for the Great Danes, who limited Cornell to 38 percent shooting.



LAST TIME OUT:
• In a game that featured 27 lead changes and 19 ties, UMass Lowell overcame its leading scorer and rebounder fouling out to outlast Cornell 98-96 in overtime on Dec. 29 at Newman Arena.
• Three Cornell players at least 20 points, the first time that had happened since prior to the 1977-78 season.
• Senior Robert Hatter scored a game-high 28 points, including the game-tying layup at the buzzer in regulation to send the game in overtime, and added three rebounds, two assists and two steals.
• Sophomore Matt Morgan scored 21 points and grabbed six boards with two steals and Wil Bathurst chipped in 20 points, seven rebounds and three assists off the bench.
• Freshman Josh Warren also had 10 points, six rebounds, five assists and three blocks after entering the game as a reserve and senior JoJo Fallas just missed being the fifth double figure scorer with nine points and five assists without a turnover.
• As a team, the Big Red had 20 assists and just 10 turnovers and shot 48 percent from the floor.
• UMass Lowell got 27 points, seven rebounds and four assists from Jahad Thomas and 22 more from Logan Primerano off the bench.
• Primerano added nine rebounds, six assists and two steals in the win for the Riverhawks, who shot 52 percent overall and connected on 10-of-20 3-pointers.
• Ryan Jones chipped in 17 points, Tyler Livingston had 13 and Matt Harris scored 12.

PLAYER NOTES TO KNOW:
• 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's 34 points in the win over Northeastern tied a Cornell record at Newman Arena, matching a 34-point effort by Nolan Cressler in an overtime loss to Brown in 2014 (record is Brown's Jason Forte with 36 points during the 2004-05 season.
• He has hit at least one 3-pointer in 14 consecutive games (dating back to last season) and has connected on multiple shots beyond the arc in eight straight contests, averaging 20.9 ppg. over that span.
• Morgan is averaging 4.3 made 3-point field goals per game over the last seven contests.
• The sophomore has reached double figures in scoring in 29 of his last 30 games.
• Senior Robert Hatter is averaging 5.2 rebounds per game - a mark that if maintained would be the most by a Cornell guard over a full season since Gerry Newby '73 averaged 5.3 rpg. as a senior in 1972-73,
• In 11 games so far this season, sophomore Stone Gettings has already piled up more than 10 times as many assists (32) as he did last year (three).
• Gettings has nine double figure scoring efforts after hitting that mark just once as a freshman.
• Getting's eight assists at Lafayette are the most by a non-guard since Adam Wire had eight at Albany in the 2010-11 season at Albany.
• His 12 points, eight rebounds and eight assists made Gettings just the fourth player to have at least 10 points, eight rebounds and eight assists in the same game (Zeke Marshall vs. Cortland in 1993, 12-10-8; Louis Dale vs. Toledo in 2009, 14-9-9; Chris Wroblewski vs. Yale in 2012, 18-8-10).
• Gettings has already set career highs in points, rebounds, assists, steals, field goals, 3-point field goals and free throws and needs one block to match his freshman season total.
• Sophomore Troy Whiteside is shooting .714 (25-of-35) from the floor over his last five games, averaging 9.0 points over that span.
• Senior JoJo Fallas has 26 assists and nine turnovers so far this season, and his 2.9 assist:turnover ratio would rank first all-time among players who saw half the team's minutes in a season.
• Fallas has 24 assists and just four turnovers over his last seven games (165 minutes).
• In 13 games off the bench, freshman Josh Warren is averaging an impressive 11.4 points and 9.6 rebounds per 40 minutes.
• Senior Darryl Smith, who set a school record for field goal percentage in a season (.649) last year, is 13-of-24 from the field this season (.542).
• After shooting .423 from the field over his first two seasons (83-of-196), Smith is shooting .634 (111-of-175) over the last two years.
• 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:
• The Big Red has a positive assist:turnover ratio (188 assists, 178 turnovers) for the first time since posting a positive mark (380:377) in 2011-12 and is +20 over its last six games (104:84).
• The Big Red has had at least three double figure scorers in 11 of the season's first 13 contests.
• 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 nine states and one Canadian province.
• Cornell has played in 47 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 and Mississippi after crossing Wyoming off the list late last week.
• 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.

NEXT UP:
• Cornell closes out non-conference play when Fisher College visits Newman Arena on Sunday, Jan. 8 at 2 p.m.
• It will be the first-ever meeting between the Big Red and the NAIA Falcons, who are 7-5 on the season with a 78-51 loss at Harvard during the first semester.