GAME INFORMATION
GAME #16: Cornell at Columbia
GAME TIME: Saturday, Jan. 20, at 4:00 p.m.
GAME SITE: Levien Gymnasium (New York, N.Y.)
SERIES RECORD: Cornell leads, 48-24
LAST MEETING: Cornell, 69-55 (1/21/2017 in New York, N.Y.)
2017 RECORDS: Cornell (4-11, 0-2 Ivy); Columbia (6-11, 0-2 Ivy)
LIVE STATS
LIVE VIDEO
 
* GAME NOTES (PDF)
 
THE MATCHUP: The #RoadtoIvyMadness continues as the Big Red women's basketball team concludes a seven-game road stand when it travels to New York City to face Columbia on Saturday, Jan. 20 at 4:00 p.m. The game will be part of a double-header with the men's team tipping off against the Lions at 7 p.m. Cornell (4-11) and Columbia (6-11) are both winless in the Ivy League after both squads fell to Ivy favorites Penn and Princeton last weekend.
 
SERIES VS. COLUMBIA: Cornell's rivalry with Columbia began in the 1975-76 season when the team represented Barnard College.
• Cornell dominated the series throughout the 1990s, during which the teams met 20 times from 1990-91 to 1999-2000, with Cornell winning 17 of those meetings, including a series-high 12 straight from 1993 to 2000. 
• Currently, the Big Red has won 12 of the last 13 outings, including seven straight dating back to the 2013-14 season.
 
A WIN WOULD:
• be the first Ivy League victory of the season for Cornell.
• be the eighth straight by the Big Red over the Lions and fourth in a row in New York City.
• be the Big Red's 13th win in the last 14 meetings with Columbia.
• improve Cornell to 49-24 in the all-time series.
• improve Coach Smith to 20-11 all-time vs. the Lions

HEAD COACH DAYNA SMITH: In her 16th season, 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.
• She is the winningest coach in Cornell history, ranking fifth in Ivy League women's basketball all-time, with 173 victories.
 
NOTING THE PRINCETON GAME: After giving Ivy League leading Princeton all it could handle through the first half of play, the Tigers opened the third quarter on a 17-0 run and never looked back en route to the 75-54 victory.
• Cornell was led by Samantha Widmann, who finished with 17 points, seven rebounds, three assists and three steals.
• Samantha Clement followed up her outstanding performance against Penn with 10 points and three steals, as the only other Big Red in double-digits.
• The Tigers shot better than 50 percent (51.9 percent overall) and dominated the boards (40-24), but finished with one more turnover (21-20).
• The Big Red shot 37.5 percent from the floor (18-48) for the game and connected on 40 percent from beyond the arc, with Widmann (2-of-2) and Kate Sramac (2-of-3) combining for 4-of-5 treys.
• Sramac also handed out four assists and registered four steals in a career-high 30 minutes.
 
SEASON NOTES TO KNOW:
• Cornell is in the midst of a seven-game road trip which began at Drexel on Dec. 21. It is the longest road trip since the Big Red played seven consecutive games away from Newman Arena from Jan. 12 to Feb. 5 during the 2004-05 season.
• Samantha Widmann has led Cornell in scoring in 10 of its 15 contests so far this season.
• Samantha Widmann has registered double-digits in 10 of 15 games for the Big Red, including four 20+ point performances and a career-high 28 points vs. Oakland.
• Samantha Widmann has registered at least three steals in nine games this season.
• Christine Ehland has grabbed at least five rebounds in all but three games this season.   
• In the 10 games since becoming a starter, Samantha Clement has posted double-digits six times, with one 20-point performance.
• Danielle Jorgenson has handed out at least five assists in seven games.
• Elodie Furey has led the team in rebounding in five games this season.
• 12 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 NON-CONFERENCE CALLS: In 11 of its 13 non-conference games, Cornell either held the lead, or was tied with its opponent at some point in the fourth quarter, including a pair of overtime decisions.
• Of those 11 games, the Big Red won four (Canisius, Stony Brook, UMass-Lowell, NJIT) with five of the losses (Colgate, Lehigh, Lafayette, Oakland, UNH) being decided by a combined total of just 15 points.
 
NCAA STATS:
• As a team, Cornell ranks inside the top 100 in fewest fouls (45th – 254), turnovers forced per game (64th – 18.93), scoring defense (91st – 61.3), and steals per game (76th – 9.6).
• Samantha Widmann ranks 46th in steals per game (2.73).
• Samantha Widmann ranks 121st in free throws made (62).
• Samantha Widmann ranks 234th in points per game (14.8).
• Danielle Jorgenson ranks 127th in assists per game (4.2).
• Janée Dennis'.889 (8-of-9) 3-point FG percentage vs. Lafayette is the sixth best in the NCAA this season for a single game.
• Janée Dennis' eight 3-pointers vs. Lafayette are the 22nd 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 four different starting line-ups, with just Danielle Jorgenson, Christine Ehland and Sam Widmann making all 15 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 host Columbia in the return game of the home-and-home series at Newman Arena on Saturday, Jan. 27 at 1 p.m. The game will be part of the program's annual Kid's Day double-header with the men's team tipping off at 4 p.m.