GAME INFORMATION
GAME #1: Cornell at Loyola
GAME TIME: Friday, Nov. 10, at 12:00 p.m.
GAME SITE: Reitz Arena (Baltimore, Md.)
SERIES RECORD: Cornell leads, 3-2
LAST MEETING: Cornell won, 58-50, Nov. 13, 2016 (Ithaca, N.Y.)
2017 RECORDS: Cornell (0-0, 0-0 Ivy); Loyola (0-0, 0-0 Patriot League)
LIVE STATS 
LIVE VIDEO

GAME NOTES PDF)
 
THE MATCHUP: The Big Red women's basketball team opens its 47th season of play when it travels to Loyola on Friday, Nov. 10 for a noon contest.
 
WHAT TIME IS IT?: The game with Loyola was rescheduled from 7 p.m. to noon in order to accommodate the Greyhounds as they host the Patriot League Men's Soccer Tournament.

FOR OPENERS: The Big Red is 20-26 all-time in season openers. Coach Dayna Smith saw her record improve to 4-11 in season openers after defeating UNH, 61-56, on Nov. 11, 2016.
 
THE SERIES VS. LOYOLA: Cornell and Loyola have played five times, with the Greyhounds winning the first two meetings before the Big Red took the lead in the series with consecutive victories in 2013, 2014 and 2016
• The first meeting came during the 1982-83 season, a 61-53 decision at Loyola and the Greyhounds won again in 1991 (89-81) in the consolation game of the UNC-Greensboro Sheraton Tournament
• Cornell earned its first win with a narrow 57-53 decision in 2013, before posting a 79-61 rout in 2014 and a 58-50 win last season.
• Coach Smith to 3-0 all-time in the series.
 
A WIN WOULD:
• give Cornell a season opening victory for the second year in a row.
• be the fourth in a row over Loyola, and improve Cornell to 4-2 in the series.
• improve Coach Smith to 4-0 all-time in the series.
• make Coach Smith 22-16 vs. the Patriot League. 
• improve the Big Red to 6-1 against the Patriot League over the past four seasons, including a mark of 1-0 this year.
 
CORNELL VS. THE PATRIOT LEAGUE: Cornell is 46-57 all-time vs. the current members of the Patriot League. The Big Red owns the advantage in the series with Lafayette (8-7), Colgate (22-15), and 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 21-16 after going 5-1 against the Patriot League over the past three seasons, including a pair of wins last year vs. Loyola and Colgate.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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).
 
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.
 
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 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.
 
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.
 
UP NEXT: The Big Red remains on the road to travel to Pitt on Monday, Nov. 13 for an 11 a.m. contest.