GAME INFORMATION
GAME #2: Cornell at Pitt
GAME TIME: Monday, Nov. 13, at 11:00 a.m.
GAME SITE: Petersen Events Center (Pittsburgh, Pa.)
SERIES RECORD: Pitt leads, 1-0
LAST MEETING: Pitt won, 56-44, Nov. 26, 2016 (Pittsburgh, Pa.)
2017 RECORDS: Cornell (0-1, 0-0 Ivy); Pittsburgh (1-0, 0-0 ACC)
LIVE STATS
LIVE VIDEO 
 
GAME NOTES (PDF)

THE MATCHUP: The Big Red women's basketball team will seek its first win of the season when it travels to Pitt on Monday, Nov. 13 for a contest at 11 a.m. The contest will serve as the Panthers' annual School Day event and more the 8,000 fans are expected to be in attendance.
 
THE SERIES VS. PITTSBURGH: Cornell and Pittsburgh have played just once in women's basketball, meeting for the first time last season, a 56-44 victory for the Panthers in Pittsburgh.
 
A WIN WOULD:
• be the first of the season for the Big Red.
• even the all-time series with Pitt at 1-1.
• snap a 10-game losing streak to ACC opponents.
• make Coach Smith 2-12 vs. the ACC. 

CORNELL VS. THE ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE: Cornell is 4-23 all-time vs. the current members of the Atlantic Coast Conference, with all four victories coming against Syracuse (4-15). The Big Red also holds a losing record vs. Boston College (0-1), Georgia Tech (0-2), Miami (0-2), Pitt (0-1) and Virginia Tech (0-1) and has never faced Clemson, Duke, Florida State, Maryland, UNC, NC State, Notre Dame, Virginia or Wake Forest … Head Coach Dayna Smith is 1-11 against the ACC with the lone win coming against Syracuse (2003-04).
 
HEAD COACH DAYNA SMITH: In her 16th season at the helm of the Big Red program, head coach Dayna Smith ranks fourth overall in Ivy League women's basketball history in years served as a head coach in the conference.
• Only one active coach, Harvard's Kathy Delaney-Smith (35th season), ranks ahead of Cornell's Smith.
• Smith is the winningest coach in Cornell history, and reached the 150-win mark for her career with the team's overtime victory vs. Dartmouth on Jan. 30, 2016.
• She currently stands at 168 career victories.
 
WELCOME HOME: Cornell head coach Dayna Smith attended high school at nearby Penn Hills, less than 15 minutes from the Pitt campus. She graduated from Penn Hills in 1992 after helping the Indians win four WPIAL championships.
• Four Big Red players hail from the state of Pennsylvania
• Senior Christine Ehland and freshman Kate Sramac are from Pittsburgh and both attended Mt. Lebanon High School.
• Sophomore Dylan Higgins (Bala Cynwyd) and freshman Elodie Furey (Villanova) both The Episcopal Academy.
 
COACHING CONNECTION: During Cornell head coach Dayna Smith's high school playing career at Penn Hills, Pitt head coach Suzie McConnell-Serio coached the Indians' main rival, Oakland Catholic. In Smith's final season, McConnell-Serio served as her head coach in the annual Pennsylvania East vs. Pennsylvania West all-star game.
 
NOTING THE SEASON-OPENER: After graduating all five starters from last season's squad, the Big Red showed flashes of brilliance but couldn't sustain the consistent play necessary to combat the hot-shooting Greyhounds, falling to Loyola 78-63 in both team's season openers.
•The game was the first career start for Danielle Jorgenson, Janee Dennis, Samantha Widmann, Halley Miklos, and Christine Ehland.
•Every healthy Cornell player saw the court and all but two found their way into the scorebook.
• Samantha Widmann finished with a career-high 19 points and pulled down a game-high eight rebouunds.
• Senior Christine Ehland registered a career-high with 10 points
• Dylan Higgins registered her first-ever collegiate points, finishing with a career-high seve.
• Danielle Jorgenson's six assists eclipsed her total from all of 2016-17 (2).
• Two Big Red - Dylan Higgins and Stephanie Umeh - saw more minutes in the season-opener than they did all of last season.
• Caroline Shelquist hit two 3-pointers ... Her 61 treys are good for 24th in Cornell history.
• Cornell held a 38-22 advantage on the boards. 
 
STATING STARTERS: The Big Red graduated all five starters from the 2016-17 squad.
• Cornell will have five brand new starters for the first time in a season since the 2004-05 campaign. 
• Of Cornell's 20 opponents this season, 16 return at least three starters, including all seven Ivy League foes.
• Stony Brook (one starter), Drexel (two), UMass-Lowell (two) and Loyola (two) are the Big Red's only four opponents to return fewer than three starters.
• Nationwide, only Savannah State returns zero starters from the 2016-17 season.
 
WHAT WAS LOST: The Big Red graduated all five starters from the 2016-17 squad, and lost one other letter winner, as well as one non-letter winner. The seven players accounted for 82 percent of Cornell's points, 71 percent of the team's rebounds and 99 percent of the Big Red's assists.
 
WHAT REMAINS: Cornell returns four players that saw action in at least 15 games a year ago, including Samantha Widmann, the first forward off the bench in 17 contests and Christine Ehland, who returned from injury, to play in 17 of the final 20 games of the season.
• Widmann is the only Big Red returner to average more than 10.0 minutes per game during the 2016-17.
 
NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK: The Big Red added five players to the 2017-18 squad, including the first-ever Ivy League transfer (Laura Bagwell-Katalinich, Penn) under Coach Smith.
• The group hails from four different states – California, Colorado, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania.
• The group consists of two forwards (Elodie Furey, Halley Miklos), two guards (Laura Bagwell-Katalinich, Kate Sramac) and one student-athlete that can play either position (Ariana Abdulmassih).
 
IVY PRESEASON RANKINGS: The Big Red was picked sixth overall in the 2017-18 Ivy League media preseason poll.
• Penn was selected to three-peat, as the Quakers garnered 129 points and 12 first-place votes to hold off Princeton, which totaled 120 points and five first-place votes.
• The four teams that earned spots in the inaugural Ivy League Women's Basketball Tournament were picked to return, as Harvard was selected to finish third with 98 points, followed by Brown in fourth with 87 points.
• Yale was picked to place fifth with 64 points, followed by Cornell (48), Columbia (42) and Dartmouth (24).
 
LIVE FROM ITHACA: The Big Red will have 24 of its regular season games broadcast on national or regional television networks and/or available on the Ivy League Network this season.
• A subscription to ILN, which is available through the ILN mobile app on Apple and Android devices as well as Apple TV and Roku, will get you 20 Big Red contests this coming season, including every home and away contest in the Ivy League 14-game round robin.
• Seven games will be broadcast on ESPN3 and one game will air on SNY via tape delay with all eight of those contests also being simulcast on ILN.
 
DON'T I NOW YOU?: Shelby Lyman '14 has returned to Cornell as an assistant coach for the 2017-18 season.
• One of the most prolific 3-point shooters in Cornell history, Lyman returns to East Hill after a successful three-year stint as an assistant coach at Division III powerhouse St. John Fisher College, helping the Cardinals to an Empire 8 championship in 2015 and a pair of NCAA DIII Tournament appearances.  
• Lyman still ranks among the top 20 in Cornell history in assists (14th – 219), steals (14th – 122), and minutes played (13th – 3096). She finished her career with 718 career points.
• A native of Snohomish, Wash., Lyman earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Government, before obtaining an MBA from St. John Fisher.
 
HI! MY NAME IS: The Big Red has pair of newcomers on the sidelines as David Elliott (assistant coach) and Caroline Nuckolls (basketball operations) have joined Coach Smith's staff. 
• Elliott is a seven-year veteran of the collegiate coaching ranks, with stints at the University of Denver, Knox College, Columbia, and St. John Fisher College.
• A native of Arizona, Elliott received a bachelors' degree in microbiology from the University of Arizona in 2009, before going on to earn a masters' degree in organizational learning and human resource development from St. John Fisher College in 2012.
• Nuckolls brings seven years of Division I athletics experience to the position, having most recently served as the Women's Basketball graduate assistant at the University of Louisiana-Monroe for the past two seasons. 
• A native of Katy, Texas, Nuckolls graduated from LSU with a bachelor's degree in Sport and Fitness Administration/Management in 2014 before going on to obtain an Master's in Public Administration from ULM in 2017.
 
RECAPPING THE 2016-17 SEASON: Cornell finished the 2016-17 season in fourth place in the Ivy League standings with a record of 16-11 overall and 7-7 in the conference, the most wins and conference wins in a season since the 2007-08 team went 20-9 overall and 11-3 in the Ivy League.
• Following the season, Nia Marshall was named first-team All-Ivy, while Megan LeDuc took home honorable mention accolades.
 
UP NEXT: The Big Red will play six of its next seven games in the friendly confines of Newman Arena, beginning with in-state rival Colgate on Thursday, Nov. 16 at 7 p.m.