GAME INFORMATION
GAME #6: Cornell vs. Lafayette
GAME TIME: Tuesday, Nov. 28, at 7:00 p.m.
GAME SITE: Newman Arena (Ithaca, N.Y.)
SERIES RECORD: Cornell leads, 8-7
LAST MEETING: Cornell won, 71-56, Nov. 15, 2007 (Ithaca, N.Y.)
2017 RECORDS: Cornell (1-4, 0-0 Ivy); Lafayette (2-3, 0-0 Patriot)
LIVE STATS:
http://www.sidearmstats.com/cornell/wbball/
LIVE VIDEO:
http://www.ivyleaguenetwork.com/cornell/schedule
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GAME NOTES (PDF)
THE MATCHUP: Coming off its first win of the season, the Big Red women's basketball team will look to keep the momentum going when it welcomes Lafayette to Newman Arena on Tuesday, Nov. 28, at 7 p.m.
SERIES VS. LAFAYETTE: The Big Red first played Lafayette in the 1982-83 season with Cornell losing the contest, 80-72.
• The Leopards won the next meeting before Cornell went on to win the next two games.
• The teams alternated, with each squad winning two games in a row, until the Big Red broke the pattern with three straight victories from the 2001-02 to 2003-04 seasons.
• With its victory in the most recent meeting (2007-08), Cornell took the lead in the series, 8-7.
A WIN WOULD:
• improve the Big Red to 2-4 this season.
• be the first victory at Newman Arena this season.
• make Cornell 9-7 all-time vs. Lafayette.
• improve Coach Smith to 4-1 against the Leopards.
• be the second in a row, and fifth in the last six meetings, against the Leopards.
• be the first of the season vs. a Patriot League opponent.
• improve the Big Red to 6-4 against the Patriot League over the past four seasons, including a mark of 1-3 this year.
• make Coach Smith 22-19 vs. the Patriot League.
CORNELL VS. THE PATRIOT LEAGUE: Cornell is 46-60 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 (22-16).
• Cornell is tied with Loyola (Md.) (3-3).
• The Big Red holds a losing mark against American (1-2), Army (5-6), Bucknell (5-19), Lehigh (2-5), 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 21-19 after going 5-4 against the Patriot League over the past four seasons, including three losses (Loyola (Md.), Colgate, and Lehigh) so far this season.
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 169 career victories.
NOTING THE CANISIUS GAME: For the third consecutive game, the Big Red found itself in a 50/50 game entering the final quarter, and for the first time this season Cornell pulled out the victory, downing Canisius, 67-59, at the Koessler Athletic Center.
• Cornell outscored the Griffs 20-14 in the final stanza to earn its first win of the season.
•
Samantha Widmann (27 points) and
Christine Ehland (17 points) both finished with a career-high in points.
• Ehland also grabbed a game-high eight rebounds, while Widmann finished with six boards and five steals.
• Overall, the Big Red's defense was impressive, forcing Canisius into 21 turnovers, nearly double its season average, leading to 25 points off Griffs' miscues.
• Cornell finished with a season-low seven turnovers.
• Clinging to a 47-45 lead to open the fourth quarter, the visitors used a 5-2 run with layups from Widman and Ehland to get some breathing room with 7:40 to play. From there, the Big Red never trailed again, thanks in large part to Ehland, who scored nine points during the critical fourth quarter.
• Cornell shot .369 from the floor and .214 from beyond the arc.
SEASON NOTES TO KNOW:
• Cornell has had a different leading scorer and a different rebounding leader in three of its five contests so far this season.
•
Samantha Widmann has registered double-digits in four of five games for the Big Red, including a pair of 20+ point performances and a career-high 27 points at Canisius.
•
Danielle Jorgenson set a new career-high for points in back-to-back games with 14 vs. Colgate followed by 17 vs. Lehigh.
• Janee Dennis,
Caroline Shelquist, and
Reena Olsen are the only three Big Red players that haven't set a career-high in points yet this season.
• Two Big Red -
Dylan Higgins and
Stephanie Umeh - saw more minutes in the season-opener than they did all of last season.
•
Danielle Jorgenson surpassed her career minutes in the third game of the season.
• The Big Red was 0-4 to start a season for the first time since the 2006-07 squad went 0-7.
• Cornell played Pitt in front of a Big Red record 10,587 fans on the Panthers' School Day event. The crowd surpassed the Big Red's 2008 NCAA Tournament game vs. UConn by 4,000 fans.
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 plays its final game before the 14-day study break when it welcomes Stony Brook to Newman Arena on Friday, Dec. 1 at 7 p.m.
