GAME INFORMATION
GAME #7: Cornell vs. Stony Brook
GAME TIME: Friday, Dec. 1, at 7:00 p.m.
GAME SITE: Newman Arena (Ithaca, N.Y.)
SERIES RECORD: Stony Brook leads, 3-1
LAST MEETING: Stony Brook won, 66-65 (2OT), Dec. 30, 2016 (Stony Brook, N.Y.)
2017 RECORDS: Cornell (1-5, 0-0 Ivy); Stony Brook (5-0, 0-0 American East)
LIVE STATS: http://www.sidearmstats.com/cornell/wbball/
LIVE VIDEO: http://www.ivyleaguenetwork.com/cornell/schedule
 
* GAME NOTES (PDF)
 
THE MATCHUP: The Big Red will play its final game before the study break when it hosts Stony Brook on Friday, Dec. 1 at 7 p.m. Cornell enters the game at 1-5 after a heartbreaking 59-58 loss to Lafayette on Tuesday night, while the Seawolves are 5-0 on the year after a dominating 69-50 win over Wagner on Sunday.  
 
SERIES VS. STONY BROOK: Cornell and the Seawolves have met just four times in women's basketball, including each of the past two seasons.
• The Big Red won the first meeting (65-51) during the 1999-2000 campaign. 
• Stony Brook has responded with three consecutive wins, the first coming in 2000-01.
• The first overtime game in the series came a year ago, as the Seawolves earned a double-OT victory on its home court.
 
A WIN WOULD:
• improve the Big Red to 2-5 this season.
• be the first victory at Newman Arena this season.
• cut Stony Brook's lead to 3-2 in the series.
• give Coach Smith her first win against the Seawolves.
• snap a three-game losing streak to Stony Brook.
• give Cornell a 22-25 record all-time vs. the America East.
• make Coach Smith 12-15 all-time vs. the America East.

CORNELL VS. THE AMERICAN EAST: Cornell improved to 21-25 all-time vs. the current members of the America East Conference after a 54-51 victory over Binghamton on Jan. 1, 2017.
• The Big Red holds a winning record vs. Albany (5-1) and UMBC (2-0).
• The series vs. Binghamton is tied (8-8).
• Cornell has a losing record vs. Hartford (0-2), Maine (0-1), New Hampshire (1-4), Stony Brook (1-3) and Vermont (4-6).
• The Big Red will face UMass-Lowell for the first time ever on Dec. 31.
• Coach Smith is 11-15 all-time vs. the America East.
 
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 170 career victories, fifth most in the history of Ivy League women's basketball.
 
NOTING THE LAFAYETTE GAME: Janée Dennis put on an offensive clinic, knocking down her first eight 3-point attempts to finish with a career- and game-high 24 points, but the Big Red couldn't hold off Lafayette's furious fourth quarter comeback and the Leopards escaped Newman Arena with a 59-58 victory on Tuesday evening.
• Dennis accounted for all of the Big Red's 3-pointers in the game going 8-of-9 from beyond the arc, just one off the school record held by Keri Farley who went 9-for-9 vs. Georgetown on Dec. 20, 1993.
• Dennis' eight 3-pointers are also tied for third overall in the history of the Ivy League.
• Sophomore Danielle Jorgenson finished with a career-high 10 assists, good for eighth in Cornell history for assists in a single game.
• Sophomore Stephanie Umeh finished with a career-high 11 points while freshman Elodie Furey grabbed a career-high 10 rebounds.
• Cornell held the slim edge in rebounds (40-38), forced the Leopards into 20 turnovers with 16 steals, and assisted on 21-of-22 baskets.
• Leading 50-47 at the final break, back-to-back treys from Dennis to open the fourth quarter pushed Cornell's lead to 56-47 with 7:33 to play, but the Big Red went cold and Lafayette closed the game on a 12-2 run, including a baseline jumper by Ellen Graham with :07 to play, to win the contest, 59-58.
 
SEASON NOTES TO KNOW:
• Cornell has had a different leading scorer a four of its six contests so far this season.
• The Big Red has had a different rebounding leader in three of its six contests so far this season.
• Samantha Widmann has registered double-digits in four of six 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.
• 11 of Cornell's 13 active players have already set a career-high in points 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. 
 
CLOSE CALLS: In each of its last five games, Cornell has either held the lead, or been tied with its opponent at some point in the fourth quarter.
• Of those five games, the Big Red has won just once (Canisius) with three others being decided by less than 5 points.
• Three of Cornell's losses (Colgate, Lehigh, and Lafayette) have come by a total of just 10 points.
 
NCAA STATS:
• As a team, Cornell ranks inside the top 100 in steals per game (48th – 10.7), turnovers forced per game (63rd – 20.17), and blocked shots per game (96th – 4.0).
• Sam Widmann ranks 37th in steals per game (3.00) and 73rd in free throws made (26).
• Danielle Jorgenson ranks 98th in assists per game (4.8).
• Elodie Furey ranks 98th in blocked shots (9).
• Janée Dennis' eight 3-pointers vs. Lafayette are the seventh most in the NCAA this season for a single game.
 
STATING STARTERS: The Big Red graduated all five starters from the 2016-17 squad.
• Cornell had five brand new starters to start a season 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.
• So far this season, Cornell has used three different starting line-ups, with just Danielle Jorgenson, Christine Ehland and Sam Widmann making all six starts.
 
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 14-day study break when it welcomes Oakland University to Newman Arena on Saturday, Dec. 16 at noon