GAME INFORMATION
GAME #3: Cornell vs. Colgate
GAME TIME: Thursday, Nov. 16, at 7:00 p.m.
GAME SITE: Newman Arena (Ithaca, N.Y.)
SERIES RECORD: Cornell leads, 22-15
LAST MEETING: Cornell won, 70-57, Nov. 16, 2016 (Hamilton, N.Y)
2017 RECORDS: Cornell (0-2, 0-0 Ivy); Colgate (1-1, 0-0 Patriot)
LIVE STATS: http://www.sidearmstats.com/cornell/wbball/
LIVE VIDEO: www.IvyLeague.tv
 
GAME NOTES (PDF)

THE MATCHUP: The Big Red women's basketball team will play its season-opener against its oldest non-conference rival when it hosts Colgate on Thursday, Nov. 14 at 7 p.m. Cornell (0-2) is seeking its first win of the season, while the Raiders bring a 1-1 record into Newman Arena.
 
THE SERIES VS. COLGATE: Standing at 37 meetings all-time, Cornell's series with the Raiders is the longest in women's basketball history, excluding Ivy League games.
• The Big Red has won 10 of the last 11 games against the Raiders to take the lead in the all-time series, 22-15.
• The series began during the 1978-79 season, a 65-60 overtime victory for the Big Red, but Colgate won 10 of the first 14 overall before Cornell won five straight from 1992-93 to 1996-97.
• Since the 1992-93 season, the Big Red has gone 18-5 against Colgate.
• Head coach Dayna Smith is 10-3 all-time in the series.
 
A WIN WOULD:
• be the first of the season for the Big Red.
• be the seventh in a row over Colgate, and 11th win in the last 12 meetings.
• improve Coach Smith to 11-3 all-time in the series.
• improve the Big Red to 6-2 against the Patriot League over the past four seasons, including a mark of 1-1 this year.
• make Coach Smith 22-17 vs. the Patriot League. 
 
CORNELL VS. THE PATRIOT LEAGUE: Cornell is 46-58 all-time vs. the current members of the Patriot League. The Big Red owns the advantage in the series with Lafayette (8-7), and Colgate (22-15), is tied with Loyola (Md.) (3-2), but holds a losing mark against American (1-2), Army (5-6), Bucknell (5-19), Lehigh (2-4), and Navy (0-2). Boston University and Holy Cross are the only members of the Patriot League that Cornell has never faced in women's basketball ... Coach Smith's record vs. the conference stands at 21-17 after going 5-2 against the Patriot League over the past four seasons, including a loss earlier this season at Loyola.
 
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.
  
NOTING THE PITT GAME: The Big Red gave ACC foe Pitt all it could handle, but couldn't hold off a fourth quarter surge by the home team in front of a raucous School Day crowd of 10,587.
• The teams entered the final stanza tied at 25-25, but the Panthers jumped out to a five-point advantage midway through the quarter and rode the momentum to a 51-39 victory, scoring more points in the fourth (26) than it had in the first three quarters combined.
• The game was played in front of a crowd that surpassed the Big Red's 2008 NCAA Tournament game vs. UConn by 4,000 fans. 
•The Panthers jumped out to 7-0 lead but a pair of Pittsburgh natives – Christine Ehland and Kate Sramac – combined for the next eight points to give Cornell its first lead (8-7).
• Ehland finished with 10 points for the second straight game and pulled down a game-high nine rebounds.
• Freshman Elodie Furey made her first career start and finished with nine rebounds to go along with solid defense against the Panther frontcourt.
 
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 welcomes its second consecutive Patriot League foe when it hosts Lehigh in Newman Arena on Monday, Nov. 20 at 7 p.m.