GAME INFORMATION
GAME #5: Cornell at Canisius
GAME TIME: Wednesday, Nov. 22, at 1:00 p.m.
GAME SITE: Koessler Athletic Center (Buffalo, N.Y.)
SERIES RECORD: Canisius leads, 7-2
LAST MEETING: Cornell won, 60-43, Dec. 22, 2016 (Ithaca, N.Y.)
2017 RECORDS: Cornell (0-4, 0-0 Ivy); Canisius (2-1, 0-0 MAAC)
LIVE STATS: http://www.sidearmstats.com/canisius/wbball/ 
LIVE VIDEO: http://www.espn3.com

* GAME NOTES (PDF)
 
THE MATCHUP: The Big Red women's basketball team will head to Buffalo to face Canisius tomorrow afternoon, Wednesday, Nov. 22, at 1 p.m. Cornell (0-4) is still seeking its first win of the season after a disappointing 62-57 loss to Lehigh last night, while the Golden Griffins improved to 2-1 after a 71-57 victory over Bowling Green on Sunday afternoon.
 
SERIES VS. CANISIUS: Canisius holds the all-time advantage against the Big Red, 7-2.
• The series began during the 1988-89 campaign with the Golden Griffins winning the first three meetings before the Big Red took its first win in the series during the 1999-2000 season.
• The Big Red snapped a four-game losing streak against the Griffs with a win last season in Newman Arena. 
 
A WIN WOULD:
• be the first of the season for the Big Red.
• make Cornell 3-7 all-time vs. Canisius.
• be the first against the Griffs in Buffalo.
• be the fifth in a row over a MAAC opponent
• give Cornell a 19-32 record all-time vs. the MAAC.
• improve head coach Dayna Smith to 2-4 vs. Canisius.
• make Coach Smith 8-9 all-time vs. the MAAC.

CORNELL VS. THE MAAC: Cornell improved to 18-32 all-time vs. the current members of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference after four consecutive victories, including last season's win vs. Canisius.
• The Big Red's last loss against a MAAC opponent came against Manhattan on Dec. 20, 2011.
• Cornell holds a winning record vs. Fairfield (3-2), Iona (1-0) and Monmouth (2-1).
• The series with Manhattan is tied (2-2).
• The Big Red has a losing record vs. Canisius (2-7), Marist (2-7), Niagara (6-10) and Siena (0-3).
• Cornell has never faced Quinnipiac, Rider or St. Peter's in women's basketball.
• Coach Smith's record against teams in the MAAC is 7-9.
 
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 LEHIGH GAME: The Big Red a hot start by visiting Lehigh to get back into the contest at the half, but then let a late three-point lead slip away as the Mountain Hawks escaped Newman Arena with a 62-57 victory on Monday night.
• Danielle Jorgenson scored a career-high 17 points to lead the Big Red.
• Stephanie Umeh added 10 points, all of which came in the first half, including her first career 3-pointer which she hit at the buzzer ending the first quarter.
• Samantha Widmann scored 10 points to reach double-digits in three of four games this season.
• Freshman Elodie Fury had a game-high eight rebounds and handed out a team-high four assists.
• The Mountain Hawks hit 6-of-9 shots from beyond the arc to build a nine point lead (24-15) before Umeh's buzzer-beater made it a 24-18 game at the first break. 
• Cornell slowly chipped away in the second quarter and took a 33-32 lead into halftime.
• The teams traded leads throughout the third and into the fourth quarter with neither taking more than a three-point advantage before Camryn Buhr rattled off five consecutive points to give the visitors a lead it would not relinquish with 4:39 remaining.
 
NOTES TO KNOW:
• Danielle Jorgenson has set a new career-high for points in each of the Big Red's last two games (14 vs. Colgate, 17 vs. Lehigh).
• Samantha Widmann has registered double-digits in three of four games for the Big Red.
• Cornell has had a different leading scorer and a different rebounding leader in three of its four contests so far this season.
• The Big Red is 0-4 to start a season for the first time since the 2006-07 squad went 0-7.
 
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 KNOW 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 return from the Thanksgiving break to take on Lafayette at Newman Arena on Tuesday, Nov. 28 at 7 p.m.